The Inn
Looking just like all the other wooden hostelries set down amid the High Alps, at the feet of the glaciers, in the bare and rocky corridors that cleave the white peaks of the mountains, the Schwarenback Inn serves as a refuge for travellers over the Gemmi pass.
For six months in the year it remains open, inhabited by Jean Hauser’s family; then, as soon as the snow lies in deep drifts, filling the valley and making the descent to Loëche impassable, the women, the father and the three sons depart, leaving the old guide, Gaspard Hari, to look after the house, with the young guide, Ulrich Kunsi, and Sam, the big St. Bernard dog.
The two men and the beast remain till the spring in this prison of snow, with nothing before their eyes save the immense white slope of the Balmhorn; they are surrounded by pale, gleaming peaks, shut in, blockaded, and buried under the snow that rises round them, enveloping, embracing and crushing the little house, heaping itself high upon the roof, reaching to the windows, and walling up the door.
It was the day on which the Hauser family was to return to Loëche, for winter was approaching and the descent becoming perilous.
Three mules went in front, loaded with clothes and luggage, and led by the three sons. Then the mother, Jeanne Hauser, and her daughter Louise mounted a fourth mule, and set off in their turn.
The father followed them, accompanied by the two guides, who were to escort the family as far as the summit of the actual descent.
First they rounded the little lake, frozen now, at the bottom of the great cavity in the rocks that lay in front of the inn, then they pursued their way along the valley, featureless as a sheet and dominated by snow peaks on every side.
The sun poured down on this dazzling white frozen desert, illuminating it with a cold, blinding glare. No life stirred in this sea of hills; there was no movement in the limitless solitude; no sound disturbed the profound silence.
Little by little the young guide, Ulrich Kunsi, a tall, long-legged Swiss, drew away from Hauser and old Gaspard Hari, and overtook the mule that bore the two women.
The younger of them watched him coming, and seemed to call him with her sad eyes. She was a small, fair peasant girl, whose milky cheeks and pale hair seemed bleached by her long sojourn amid the ice.
When he had caught up with the animal that carried her, he put his hand on its buttock and slowed his pace. Old Madame Hauser began to speak to him, enumerating with infinite detail all her recommendations for the winter. It was the first time that he was staying up, whereas old Hari had already spent fourteen winters under the snow at the Schwarenbach Inn.
Ulrich Kunsi listened, but did not appear to understand; he never took his eyes off the young girl. From time to time he would answer: “Yes, Madame Hauser,” but his thoughts seemed far away, and his calm face remained impassive.
They reached the Lake of Daube, whose long frozen surface stretched, perfectly motionless, at the bottom of the valley. To their right, the Daubenhorn thrust up its black rocks, rising to a peak, near the enormous moraines of the Loemmern glacier, dominated by the Wildstrubel.
As they drew near the Gemmi pass, where the descent to Loëche begins, they came suddenly upon the vast rim of the Alps of the Valais, from which they were separated by the deep broad valley of the Rhône.
It was a distant host of white, uneven summits, some sharp, others flattened at the top, and all gleaming in the sun: the Mischabel with its two horns, the powerful bulk of the Wissehorn, the weighty Brunnegghorn, the high and formidable pyramid of the murderous Matterhorn, and that monstrous jade, the Dent-Blanche.
Then, right below them, in an enormous cavity at the bottom of a fearful abyss, they caught sight of Loëche, whose houses were like grains of sand thrown into that huge crevice, ended and enclosed by the Gemmi, and opening out, below, on to the Rhône.
The mule halted at the edge of the path that runs, twisting, turning endlessly, and coiling back in fantastic and marvellous fashion, down the mountains on the right, as far as to the almost invisible little village at their feet. The women jumped down into the snow.
The two old men had caught them up.
“We must be off,” said Hauser. “Goodbye, and keep your spirits up, friends; see you next year.”
“Next year,” repeated old Hari.
They embraced. Then Madame Hauser, in her turn offered her cheeks, and the girl did the same. When it was Ulrich Kunsi’s turn, he murmured into Louise’s ear: “Don’t forget the men up above.” “No, I won’t,” she replied, so softly that he guessed it without hearing.
“Well, goodbye,” repeated Jean Hauser, “and good health to you.”
And, passing in front of the women, he began the descent.
Soon all three vanished at the first bend in the road.
And the two men turned back towards the Schwarenbach Inn.
They walked slowly, side by side, without speaking. It was over; they would be shut up alone together, for four or five months.
Then Gaspard Hari began to talk about his life there the previous winter. He had stayed up with Michel Canol, who was now too old to try it again, for an accident may easily happen during the long period of solitude. They had not been bored; it was all a matter of playing one’s proper part from the very first day; and one always succeeded in inventing various distractions, games, and other ways of passing the time.
Ulrich Kunsi listened with lowered eyes, following in thought the friends descending to the village down the winding ways of the Gemmi pass.
Soon they caught sight of the inn, scarcely visible, so small was it, a black speck at the foot of the monstrous wave of snow.
When they opened the door, Sam, the big curly-haired dog, began to gambol round them.
“Come, my son,” said old Gaspard, “we have no woman here now; we must get dinner ready, and you will peel the potatoes.”
They both sat down on wooden stools and began to dip their bread in the soup.
The next morning seemed a long one to Ulrich Kunsi. Old Hari smoked and spat into the fireplace, while the young man stared through the window at the dazzling mountain opposite the house.
He went out in the afternoon and followed the route of the day before, searching on the ground for the shoe prints of the mule that had borne the two women. When he was at the summit of the pass, he lay down on his face at the edge of the abyss and gazed at Loëche.
The village in its well of rock was not yet drowned in snow, although the snow had drawn very near it, to be halted abruptly by the pine-forests that protected the outlying houses. From above, the houses looked like paving-stones in a meadow.
Louise Hauser was there, now, in one of those grey buildings. In which? Ulrich Kunsi was too far away to tell them apart. How he longed to go down, while it was still possible!
But the sun had disappeared behind the great crest of Wildstrubel, and the young man returned. Old Hari was smoking. At sight of his companion, he proposed a game of cards, and they sat down face to face on either side of the table.
They played for a long time, a simple game called brisque, and after supper they went to bed.
The days that followed were like the first, bright and cold, with no fresh snow. Old Gaspard spent the afternoons watching the eagles and rare birds that ventured on the frozen heights, while Ulrich returned regularly to the summit of the Gemmi to gaze at the village. Then they would play cards, dice or dominoes, winning or losing trifling objects to give an interest to their game.
One morning Hari, the first to get up, called his companion. A moving, deep, light cloud of white foam was falling on them and round them, silently, burying them little by little under a thick, frothy coverlet that deadened all sound. It lasted four days and four nights. They had to free the door and the windows, hollow out a passage and cut steps in order to walk out over the surface of this powdered ice that twelve hours of frost had made harder than the granite of the moraines.
Thenceforward they lived the life of prisoners, hardly venturing outside their dwelling-place. They had divided up the housework, and each regularly performed his share. Ulrich Kunsi made himself responsible for the washing and cleaning—in fact, for all the labour of keeping the house neat. It was he also who split the wood, while Gaspard Hari cooked and tended the fire. Their tasks, regular and monotonous, were interrupted by long games of cards or dice. They never quarrelled, both being of calm and peaceful temper. They never even indulged in moments of impatience, ill humour or sharp words, for they had determined to possess their souls in patience throughout their winter on the heights.
Sometimes old Gaspard would take his gun and go off after chamois; occasionally he killed one. Then there would be rejoicings at the Schwarenbach Inn, and a great feast of fresh meat.
One morning he went out for this purpose. The outside thermometer had dropped to zero. The sun had not yet risen, and so the hunter hoped to catch the animals on the lower slopes of the Wildstrubel.
Ulrich, left by himself, stayed in bed till ten. He was by nature a heavy sleeper, but had never dared to abandon himself to his weakness in the presence of the old guide, always energetic and early out of bed.
He lunched slowly with Sam, who also spent his days and nights sleeping in front of the fire; then he felt sad, frightened by the solitude: he was suffering from his need of their daily game of cards, as a man does suffer under the prick of a powerful habit.
So he went out to meet his companion, who was due back at four o’clock.
The snow had levelled the whole deep valley, filling the crevasses, and quilting the rocks; it formed, between the immense peaks, nothing but an immense white bowl, smooth, blinding, and frozen.
It was three weeks since Ulrich had last gone to the edge of the abyss and gazed down at the village. He was anxious to pay a visit thither before climbing the slopes that led to Wildstrubel. Loëche was now also covered by the snow, and it was scarcely possible to distinguish the houses buried under its pale cloak.
He turned to the right, and reached the glacier of Loemmern. He walked with his long, mountaineer’s stride, striking his iron-tipped stick upon the snow, itself as hard as stone. With his keen eyes he sought for the little moving black speck, far away on that enormous tablecloth.
When he was at the edge of the glacier, he stopped, wondering if the old man really had gone that way. Then he set off again, skirting the moraines, at a swifter, more uneasy pace.
The light was fading; the snows were turning pink; a dry icy wind ran in hurried gusts over their crystal surface. Ulrich uttered a shrill cry, quivering and prolonged. His voice fled abroad in the silence that covered the sleeping mountains; it ran far away over the deep, motionless billows of icy foam, like the cry of a bird over the waves of the sea; then it died out, and there was no reply.
He resumed his march. The sun had sunk below the far horizon, behind the peaks still reddened by the glow in the sky; but the hollows of the valley were growing grey. And suddenly the young man was afraid. He felt as though the silence, the cold, the solitude, the winter death of the mountains were flowing into his own body, would stop and freeze his blood, stiffen his limbs, and turn him into a still, frozen creature. He began to run, fleeing towards his dwelling-place. The old man, he thought, would have returned during his absence. He must have taken another route; he would be sitting before the fire, with a dead chamois at his feet.
Soon he came in sight of the inn. No smoke was coming from it. Ulrich ran faster, and opened the door. Sam dashed up to greet him, but Gaspard Hari had not returned.
Frightened, Kunzi turned about, as though expecting to find his companion hiding in a corner. Then he re-lit the fire and made the soup, still hoping to see the old man come in.
From time to time he would go out to see whether he were not in sight. Darkness had fallen, the wan darkness of the mountains, a pale, livid darkness, illumined on the sky’s rim by a slender yellow crescent that hovered on the verge of sinking behind the peaks.
Then the young man would return, sit down, warm his feet and hands, and turn over in his mind various possible accidents.
Gaspard might have broken his leg, have fallen into a hole or made a false step and sprained his ankle. And he must be lying in the snow, overcome and stiffened by the cold, in agony of mind, screaming, lost, shouting for help, perhaps, shouting with all the strength of his voice through the silence of the night.
But where? The mountains were so vast, so cruel, and their lower slopes so perilous, especially at that time of year, that it needed ten or twenty guides, walking for a week in every direction, to find a man lost in their immensity.
But Ulrich Kunzi resolved to go out with Sam if Gaspard Hari did not return between midnight and one o’clock in the morning.
He made his arrangements.
He put provisions for two days into a bag, took his steel climbing-irons, wound a long, thin, strong cord about his waist, and made sure that his iron-tipped stick and the ax he used for cutting steps in the ice were in order. Then he waited. The fire blazed in the hearth; the big dog snored in the light of the flames; in its sonorous wooden case the clock sounded its regular tick, like the beating of a heart.
He waited, his ear attuned for distant sounds, shivering when the light breeze swept along the roof and the walls.
Midnight struck; he shuddered. Then, feeling shaky and frightened, he set water on the fire, so as to have a drink of good hot coffee before he set out.
When the clock struck one, he rose, woke Sam, opened the door, and set off in the direction of the Wildstrubel.
For five hours he ascended, scaling the rocks by means of his climbing-irons, cutting steps in the ice, always pressing forward, and sometimes using the rope in order to haul up the dog from the bottom of a wall of rock too steep for him. It was about six o’clock when he reached one of the peaks to which old Gaspard often went in search of chamois.
He waited for daybreak.
The sky paled overhead, and suddenly a fantastic glow, lit none knows whence, came at one stride over the immense sea of pale crests that extended all round him for a hundred leagues. This vague light seemed to pour from the snow and spread itself abroad. Little by little the loftiest summits in the distance were all tinged with a pink soft as flesh, and the red sun rose behind the massive giants of the Bernese Alps.
Ulrich Kunzi set off again. He walked like a hunter, stooping, searching for traces, and bidding the dog:
“Rout him out, boy; rout him out.”
He was now going back down the mountain, examining the crevasses, and sometimes calling, sending forth a prolonged shout that died very swiftly in the mute immensities of space. Then he would set his ear to the ground to listen; he fancied he could discern a voice, would begin to run, shouting again, would hear nothing more and would sit down, exhausted and despairing. At about midday he had lunch and gave food to Sam, who was as weary as himself. Then he recommenced his search.
When evening came on he was still walking, having scoured over fifty kilometres of the mountains. Finding himself too far from the house to return to it, and too tired to drag himself any further, he dug a hole in the snow, and huddled inside it, with the dog, under a blanket he had brought. There they lay, one against the other, the man and the beast, warming each other’s bodies, but, even so, frozen to the marrow.
Ulrich scarcely slept at all; his mind was haunted by visions, and his limbs racked by shivering fits.
Day was breaking when he rose. His legs were as stiff as iron bars, his spirit so weak that he was ready to scream with anguish, and his heart so wildly pulsing that he grew dizzy with excitement whenever he thought he heard a noise.
Suddenly he thought that he too was doomed to die of cold out in the solitude, and his terror of such a death whipped up his energy and revived his strength.
He was descending now towards the inn, stumbling and recovering himself, followed in the distance by Sam, who was limping along on three legs.
They did not reach Schwarenbach until about four in the afternoon. The house was empty. The young man lit the fire, ate some food, and went to sleep, too stupefied with exhaustion to think of anything.
He slept for a long, a very long time, in a slumber like death. But suddenly a voice, a cry, a name: “Ulrich,” broke through to the depths of his unconsciousness and made him start up. Had he been dreaming? Was this one of the fantastic calls that pierce the dreams of an uneasy mind? No, he heard that quivering cry still, piercing his ears and still present in his body’s being, in the tips of his muscular fingers. Assuredly someone had shouted, someone had called “Ulrich!” Someone was there, near the house. He could not doubt it. So he opened the door and yelled: “Is that you, Gaspard?” with all the strength in his throat.
Nothing answered; no sound, no murmur, no groan, nothing. It was dark. The snow was ghostly.
The wind had risen, the icy wind that cracks stones and leaves nothing alive upon these deserted heights. It swept by in sharp gusts, more parching and more deadly than the fiery wind of the desert. Again Ulrich shouted: “Gaspard!—Gaspard!—Gaspard!”
Then he waited. All was silent in the mountains! Then a wave of terror shook him to the bone. With one bound he got back inside the inn, shut the door, and thrust home the bolts; then he fell shivering into a chair, certain that he had just been called by his companion at the moment when he rendered up his soul.
Of that he was sure, as a man is sure of being alive or of eating bread. Old Gaspard Hari had been dying for two days and three nights, somewhere out there, in a hole, in one of those deep untrodden ravines whose whiteness is more sinister than the darkness of a subterranean dungeon. He had been dying for two days and three nights, and a moment ago had succumbed, thinking of his companion. And his soul, scarce freed, had flitted to the inn where Ulrich lay sleeping, and had called him by the mysterious and awful power that the souls of the dead have to haunt the living. It had cried aloud, that voiceless soul, in the afflicted soul of the sleeper; had cried its last farewell, or its reproach, or its curse upon the man who had given up the search too soon.
And Ulrich felt it there, quite close, behind the wall, behind the door he had just shut. It was wandering, like a night bird brushing against a lighted window with its feathers; the frenzied youth was on the point of screaming with horror. He wanted to run away and dared not go out, for there the phantom would remain, day and night, round the inn, so long as the old guide’s body remained undiscovered and unburied in the hallowed ground of a cemetery.
Dawn came, and Kunzi recovered some measure of confidence at the sun’s shining return. He prepared his meal, and made broth for the dog; then sat motionless in a chair, in agony of soul, thinking of the old man lying under the snow.
Then, as soon as night covered the mountains again, new terrors began to assail him. He was walking now about the dark kitchen, badly lit by the flame of a single candle. He walked from one end of the room to the other, in long strides, listening, listening for that terrifying scream of the other night to come again across the melancholy silence outside. The poor wretch felt lonelier than any man had ever been! He was alone in that immense desert of snow, alone, two thousand metres above the inhabited earth, above human dwellings, above the roaring, palpitating stir of life, alone in the frozen sky! He was tortured by a mad desire to escape, anywhither, anyhow, to get down to Loëche by flinging himself into the abyss; but he dared not even open the door, certain that the other man, the dead man, would bar his way, that he too might not be left alone in the heights.
Towards midnight, weary of walking, overcome with anguish and terror, he drowsed at last in his chair, for he dreaded his bed as a man dreads a haunted place.
And suddenly the piercing cry of the previous night tore at his ears, so loud and shrill that Ulrich stretched out his arms to repel the ghost, and, chair and all, fell over on to his back.
Sam, awakened by the noise, began to bark as frightened dogs will bark, and prowled round the room, seeking the spot whence came the danger. Coming to the door, he sniffed beneath it, panting, sniffling, and whining, with hair on end and tail erect.
Kunzi had risen in terror and, holding his chair by one of its legs, cried out: “Don’t come in, don’t come in, or I’ll kill you.” And the dog, excited by his threats, barked furiously at the invisible foe against whom his master was shouting defiance.
Little by little, Sam calmed down and went back and lay down on the hearth, but he remained uneasy, with head erect and shining eyes, and snarled through his teeth.
Ulrich too recovered his composure, but, feeling that his fear was sapping his strength, he went to get a bottle of brandy from the cupboard, and drank several glasses of it, one after another. His thoughts became vague; his courage was strengthened; a burning fever glided into his veins.
He ate practically nothing next day, limiting his diet to alcohol. And for several days on end he lived in a state of bestial drunkenness. As soon as thoughts of Gaspard Hari returned to him, he started drinking again, and continued till he fell to the ground, completely intoxicated. There he would lie, face downwards, dead drunk, his limbs twisted, snoring, with his forehead to the floor. But no sooner had he digested the maddening, burning liquor than the same cry: “Ulrich!” woke him like a bullet piercing his skull; and he rose, still tottering, stretching out his hands to keep from falling, and calling Sam to his aid. And the dog, who seemed to be going mad like his master, would rush at the door, scratching it with his claws and gnawing it with his long white teeth, while the young man, with upturned face and neck straining backwards, swallowed the brandy in great gulps, like cold water drunk after a race; and presently the spirit dulled his thoughts again, and his memory, and his frantic terror.
In three weeks he got through his entire stock of alcohol. But this perpetual drunkenness merely dulled his terror; and it rose with renewed fury as soon as he could no longer assuage it. Then his obsession, made worse by a month of drunkenness, and constantly growing in that utter solitude, pierced his brain like a gimlet. He had come now to striding up and down his dwelling like a caged animal, setting his ear to the door to listen if the thing were there and defying it through the wall.
And each time he dozed, overcome by fatigue, he heard the voice that made him leap to his feet.
At last, one night, he rushed to the door, like a coward pushed to the last extremity, and opened it, to see the thing that called him, and force it to be silent.
A gust of cold air struck him full in the face, freezing him to the bone, and he shut the door and thrust home the bolts, without noticing that Sam had rushed out. Then, shuddering, he piled wood on the fire and sat down to warm himself; but suddenly he started. Something was scratching the wall, and weeping.
“Go away,” he cried frantically. He was answered by a long-drawn melancholy wail.
At that, all that was left of his reason succumbed to abject terror. “Go away,” he said again, turning round and round to find a corner to hide in. But the thing outside, still weeping, went all along the side of the house, rubbing against the wall. Ulrich dashed to the oaken sideboard, full of plates and provisions, and, lifting it with superhuman strength, dragged it to the door, to secure himself with a barricade. Then, heaping up all the remaining furniture, bedsteads, mattresses, and chairs, he blocked up the window, as though he were preparing for a siege.
But the thing outside was now uttering great mournful moans, and the young man began to answer in like moans.
Whole days and nights went by, and neither ceased to howl. One ran constantly about the house, scratching at the wall with its nails with such violence that it seemed eager to pull it down; the other, inside, followed its every movement, all huddled up, his ear glued to the stone wall, answering its cries with horrible screams.
One evening Ulrich heard no more noises, and sat down, so worn out with fatigue that he fell asleep immediately.
He woke without memory, without thought, as though his head had been emptied during his sunken slumber. He was hungry; he ate.
The winter was over. The Gemmi pass became practicable again, and the Hauser family set off on their way back to the inn.
As soon as they had reached the summit of the ascent, the women clambered on to their mule and began to talk of the two men whom they would shortly see again.
They were surprised that neither of them had descended a few days earlier, as soon as the road was open, to bring news of their long wintering.
At last they caught sight of the inn, still covered and quilted with snow. The door and the window were closed; a little smoke issued from the roof, a fact that reassured old Hauser. But, drawing nearer, he perceived on the threshold the skeleton of an animal picked clean by the eagles, a large skeleton lying on its side.
They all examined it. “It must be Sam,” said Mme. Hauser, and she shouted: “Hey, Gaspard.”
A cry answered from within, a shrill cry, that sounded like the cry of some animal. “Hey, Gaspard,” repeated old Hauser. Another cry like the first was heard.
Then the three men, the father and the two sons, tried to open the door. It stood fast.
They took from the empty cowshed a long beam to use as a battering-ram, and swung it with all their strength. The wood rang and yielded, the planks flew to pieces; then a great crash shook the house and they saw a man standing inside behind the fallen sideboard, with hair falling to the shoulders, a beard on his chest, gleaming eyes, and rags of cloth upon his body.
They could not recognise him, but Louise Hauser exclaimed: “It’s Ulrich, Mother!” And her mother saw that it was indeed Ulrich, although his hair was white.
He let them come up to him; he let them touch him; but he made no answer to their questions, and had to be taken to Loëche, where the doctors decided that he was mad.
And no one ever knew what had become of his companion.
Louise Hauser nearly died that summer of a decline attributed to the mountain cold.