furnished like a hut, just tables and chairs and bare wooden walls. One
felt very close and secure in the room, as in a hut, shut away from the
outer world.
The hen-like woman came.
'Can I have a bed,' I said, 'for the night?'
'_Abendessen, ja!_' she replied. 'Will you have soup and boiled beef and
vegetables?'
I said I would, so I sat down to wait, in the utter silence. I could
scarcely hear the ice-stream, the silence seemed frozen, the house
empty. The woman seemed to be flitting aimlessly, scurriedly, in reflex
against the silence. One could almost touch the stillness as one could
touch the walls, or the stove, or the table with white American
oil-cloth.
Suddenly she appeared again.
'What will you drink?'
She watched my face anxiously, and her voice was pathetic, slightly
pleading in its quickness.
'Wine or beer?' she said.
I would not trust the coldness of beer.
'A half of red wine,' I said.
I knew she was going to keep me an indefinite time.
She appeared with the wine and bread.
'Would you like omelette after the beef?' she asked. 'Omelette with
cognac--I can make it _very_ good.'
I knew I should be spending too much, but I said yes. After all, why
should I not eat, after the long walk?
So she left me again, whilst I sat in the utter isolation and stillness,
eating bread and drinking the wine, which was good. And I listened for
any sound: only the faint noise of the stream. And I wondered, Why am I
here, on this ridge of the Alps, in the lamp-lit, wooden, close-shut
room, alone? Why am I here?
Yet somehow I was glad, I was happy even: such splendid silence and
coldness and clean isolation. It was something eternal, unbroachable: I
was free, in this heavy, ice-cold air, this upper world, alone. London,
far away below, beyond, England, Germany, France--they were all so
unreal in the night. It was a sort of grief that this continent all
beneath was so unreal, false, non-existent in its activity. Out of the
silence one looked down on it, and it seemed to have lost all
importance, all significance. It was so big, yet it had no significance.
The kingdom of the world had no significance: what could one do but
wander about?
The woman came with my soup. I asked her, did not many people come in
the summer. But she was scared away, she did not answer, she went like a
leaf in the wind. However, the soup was good and plentiful.
She was a long time before she came with the next course. Then she put
the tray on the table, and looking at me, then looking away,
shrinking, she said:
'You must excuse me if I don't answer you--I don't hear well--I am
rather deaf.'
I looked at her, and I winced also. She shrank in such simple pain from
the fact of her defect. I wondered if she were bullied because of it, or
only afraid lest visitors would dislike it.
She put the dishes in order, set me my plate, quickly, nervously, and
was gone again, like a scared chicken. Being tired, I wanted to weep
over her, the nervous, timid hen, so frightened by her own deafness. The
house was silent of her, empty. It was perhaps her deafness which
created this empty soundlessness.
When she came with the omelette, I said to her loudly:
'That was very good, the soup and meat.' So she quivered nervously, and
said, 'Thank you,' and I managed to talk to her. She was like most deaf
people, in that her terror of not hearing made her six times worse than
she actually was.
She spoke with a soft, strange accent, so I thought she was perhaps a
foreigner. But when I asked her she misunderstood, and I had not the
heart to correct her. I can only remember she said her house was always
full in the winter, about Christmas-time. People came for the winter
sport. There were two young English ladies who always came to her.
She spoke of them warmly. Then, suddenly afraid, she drifted off again.
I ate the omelette with cognac, which was very good, then I looked in
the street. It was very dark, with bright stars, and smelled of snow.
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