The Dead Mountaineer's Inn (6 page)

Mrs. Moses set down her plate, applied a napkin to her beautiful lips and, raising her eyes to the ceiling, said:

“Oh how I love beautiful sunsets! What a feast of colors!”

I immediately felt a strong desire to be alone. I stood and said firmly:

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I'll see you at dinner.”

“I have no idea who he is,” the owner said, examining his glass under the light. “He signed the book claiming to be a salesman traveling for personal reasons. But he's no salesman. A half-crazy alchemist, magician, inventor maybe … but not a salesman.”

We were sitting in front of the fireplace. The coals were hot; the armchairs ancient, sturdy, reliable. The port was warm, infused with lemon, and fragrant. The low light was comfortable, ruddy, utterly cozy. A blizzard was whipping itself up outside and causing the fireplace to whistle. The inn was quiet, except for the peal of sobbing laughter that burst out every once in a while, as if from a cemetery, accompanied by the clack of a well-shot billiard ball. Kaisa was banging pans together in the kitchen.

“Salesman are usually cheap,” the owner continued thoughtfully. “But Mr. Moses is not cheap—not at all. ‘Might I ask,' I asked him, ‘Whose recommendation I have to thank for the honor of your stay?' Instead of answering me he took a hundred-crown bill out of his pocket, set fire to it with his lighter, then lit a cigarette off of that and answered, blowing smoke in my face: ‘The name is Moses, sir. Albert Moses! A Moses doesn't require a recommendation. A Moses is at home everywhere and under every roof.' What do you think of that?”

I thought about it.

“I know a counterfeiter who said the exact same thing when asked for his papers,” I said.

“Impossible,” the owner said smugly. “His bills are real.”

“Some kind of insane millionaire, then?”

“He's definitely a millionaire,” the owner said. “But who is he? He's traveling for personal reasons … But no one just passes through my valley. People come here to ski or rock climb. It's a dead end. It doesn't go anywhere.”

I leaned back in the chair and crossed my legs. It felt unusually good to be sitting in exactly this position and speculating, in the most serious possible manner, on the identity of Mr. Moses.

“Well, all right, then,” I said. “A dead end. And what is someone like Mr. Du Barnstoker doing at this dead end?”

“Oh, Mr. Du Barnstoker—he's another matter altogether. He's been visiting me every year now for thirteen years. The first time he came, the inn was still known as ‘The Shack.' He's crazy for my liqueur. Mr. Moses, on the other hand, appears to be constantly drunk—but he hasn't asked me for a single bottle.”

I grunted significantly and took a large sip.

“An inventor,” the owner said decisively. “An inventor, or a magician.”

“You believe that there are such things as magicians, Mr. Snevar?”

“Please, call me Alek. Plain Alek.”

I picked up my glass and toasted Alek with another long swallow.

“In that case, call me Peter,” I said.

The owner nodded solemnly and took a generous sip in Peter's honor.

“Do I believe in magicians?” he said. “I believe in anything
that I can imagine, Peter. In wizards, in almighty God, in the devil, in ghosts, in flying saucers. If the human brain is capable of imagining something, then that means it must exist somewhere—otherwise why would the brain be capable of imagining it?”

“You're a philosopher, Alek.”

“Yes, Peter, I'm a philosopher. I'm a poet, a philosopher, a mechanic. Have you seen my perpetual motion machines?”

“No. Do they work?”

“Sometimes. A lot of the time I have to stop them, their parts wear out way too fast … Kaisa!” he yelled, so suddenly that I was startled. “Another glass of hot port for Mr. Inspector!”

The St. Bernard came in, sniffed us, gazed skeptically at the fire, retreated to the wall and fell on the floor with a thud.

“Lel!” the host said. “Sometimes I envy that dog. He sees and hears a lot—quite a lot—as he wanders the halls at night. He could probably tell us quite a story, if he was capable of doing it. And if he wanted to, of course.”

Kaisa appeared, looking very flushed and slightly disheveled. She handed me the glass of port, curtsied, giggled and left.

“What a little dumpling,” I muttered mechanically. After all, I was on my third glass. The owner laughed good-naturedly.

“She's irresistible,” he confessed. “Even Mr. Du Barnstoker couldn't restrain himself. He pinched her bottom yesterday. And the reaction she gets from our physicist …”

“In my opinion, our physicist has his eye primarily on Mrs. Moses,” I said.

“Mrs. Moses …” the host said thoughtfully. “You know, Peter, I have good reason to suspect that she is neither a Mrs. nor a Moses.”

I didn't object to this. Who cares, anyway …

The owner continued. “No doubt you've already noticed that she is significantly dumber than Kaisa. Not to mention the fact that”—he lowered his voice—“Moses beats her. In my opinion.”

I shuddered.

“What do you mean ‘beats?”

“In my opinion, he uses a whip. Moses has a whip. A quirt. As soon as I saw it I thought, ‘Now why would Moses need a quirt?' Can you answer that one for me?”

“But Alek …” I said.

“I'm not prying,” the owner said. “I never pry, about anything. As for Mr. Moses, you brought him up—I would never have allowed myself to bring up that particular subject. I was speaking of our illustrious physicist.”

“All right,” I agreed. “Let's talk about the illustrious physicist.”

“This is the third or fourth time he's stayed with me,” the owner said. “Each time he visits, he's more illustrious.”

“Wait,” I said. “Who are we actually talking about?”

“Mr. Simone, obviously. Don't tell me you've never heard of him?”

“Never,” I said. “Why would our paths have crossed—because of some forged baggage documents?”

The owner gave me a reproachful look.

“One should know the heroes of one's national science,” he said sternly.

“You're serious?” I said.

“Absolutely.”

“That pesky little bore—a hero of our national science?”

The owner nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I know what you mean: the way a man carries himself is the most important thing, everything else is secondary. No doubt you're right. Mr. Simone has provided
me with an inexhaustible source of reflection on the glaring discrepancy between a man's behavior when he's relaxing, and the value for humankind of that same man when he's at work.”

“Huh,” I said. It was worse than the quirt.

“I see that you don't believe me,” the owner said. “But I must say …”

He paused, and I sensed that there was someone else with us by the fireplace. I had to turn my head and squint. It was the only child of Du Barnstoker's deceased brother. The kid had snuck up to us without making a sound, and now it was squatting next to Lel and stroking the dog's head. Bright red light from the glowing coals was playing in its huge black glasses. The kid somehow seemed very lonely, forgotten and small. It gave off a barely perceptible smell of sweat, high-quality perfume and gasoline.

“What a blizzard …” it said in a plaintive and reedy voice.

“Brun,” I said. “Hey, kid, take off those awful glasses for a minute.”

“Why?” the kid asked drearily.

Why indeed, I thought, and said:

“Because I'd like to see your face.”

“That is absolutely unnecessary,” the child said, sighing, and asked: “Please give me a cigarette.”

Well, then, it was obviously a girl. A very sweet girl. And very lonely. How awful: to be by yourself at her age. I took out a pack of cigarettes for her and flicked open my lighter, searching for something to say but not finding anything.

Of course it was a girl. She even smoked like a girl: in short, nervous puffs.

“I'm scared,” she said. “Someone was fiddling with the doorknob to my room.”

“There, there,” I said. “It was probably just your uncle.”

“No,” she said. “My uncle is asleep. He dropped his book on the floor and just lay there with his mouth open. For some reason I suddenly thought he'd died …”

“A glass of brandy, Brun?” the owner said in a muffled voice. “No harm in a little glass of brandy on a night like this.”

“I don't want any,” Brun said and shrugged her shoulders. “Are you going to be sitting here much longer?”

I lacked the strength to go on listening to her pitiful voice any longer.

“What the hell, Alek,” I said. “Are you the owner of this establishment or not? Couldn't you order Kaisa to spend the night with this poor girl?”

“That's a good idea,” the kid said, perking up. “Kaisa—that's just what I need. Kaisa, or something like that.”

I drained my glass in confusion, as the kid shot a long and precise strand of spit into the fireplace and flicked her stub in after it.

“There's a car outside,” it said in a husky baritone. “Can't you hear it?”

The owner stood up, picked up his fur vest and headed for the exit. I ran after him.

A real blizzard was raging outside. A large black car was idling in front of the porch. The beams of its headlights lit up people arguing and waving their arms.

“Twenty crowns!” screeched a falsetto voice. “Twenty crowns and not a penny less! Damn you—didn't you see the road?”

“For twenty crowns I could buy you and that clunker both!” someone screamed back.

The owner rushed off the porch.

“Gentlemen!” he bellowed loudly. “What is this foolishness?”

“Twenty crowns! I still have to make it back!”

“Fifteen crowns and not a penny more! Extortionist! Give me your license number—I want to write it down!”

“You're a cheapskate through and through! Ready to kill yourself over a fiver!”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!”

I was starting to get cold, so I went back to the fireplace. Neither the kid nor the dog were there anymore. This disappointed me. I picked up my glass and made my way to the bar. In the hall, I stopped; the front door burst open, revealing a huge, snow-covered man carrying a suitcase. “Brrr …” he said, shaking himself until a blond, red-cheeked Viking was standing before me. His face was wet, and snow lay on his eyebrows in white tufts. When he saw me, he smiled briefly, displaying his even, clean teeth, and said, in a deep and pleasant voice:

“Olaf Andvarafors. Just Olaf is fine.”

I introduced myself too. The door blew open again, letting in the owner carrying two trunks, and behind him a small man bundled up to his eyeballs, who was also covered with snow, and very upset.

“Damned crooks!” he said, in hysterical anguish. “We'd agreed on fifteen. Seven and a half a head, that's just obvious—so where'd twenty come from? What the hell is wrong with the people in this town? For Christ's sake, I'll drag him to the station!…”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” the host said. “All this over a trifle … I beg you, this way … Gentlemen!…”

The small man continued to shout about bloody mugs and the police, as he allowed himself to be dragged away to the office—at which point Olaf the Viking boomed, “What a scrooge …,” looking around as if he were surprised not to find a crowd here waiting to greet him.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“I don't know. The taxi picked us both up—there wasn't another one.”

He stared silently at a point somewhere above my shoulder. I looked around: there didn't seem to be anything remarkable there. Just a curtain drawn across the entrance to the corridor that led to the study and the Moseses' room. It was swaying slightly, probably from the draft.

By morning the storm was over. I got up at dawn, while the rest of the inn was still asleep; I rushed out onto the porch wearing only my underwear, and scrubbed myself all over with fresh, fluffy snow, in the hope of getting rid of the hangover I was still feeling from the three glasses of port. The sun had just risen from over the eastern ridge, and the long blue shadow of the inn was stretching into the valley. I noticed that the third window to the right on the second floor was wide open. Apparently someone couldn't get enough of the healthy mountain air—even at night.

I went back to my room, got dressed, locked the door behind me and ran to the pantry, practically jumping down the stairs. A flushed and sweaty Kaisa was already fussing over the lit stove in the kitchen. She brought me a cup of cocoa and a sandwich, both of which I finished standing right there in the pantry, as I listened with half an ear to the owner humming away in his workshop. Please let me not run into anyone, I thought. This morning is too good to share … Thinking about it—about the clear sky, the golden sun, the empty, powder-filled valley—I felt like a miser, like the little man who'd appeared last night in that fur coat up to his eyebrows, ready to get in a fight over five crowns (Hinkus was his name, a youth counselor: he was on sick leave.) And then wouldn't you know
it, I didn't run into anyone, except Lel the St. Bernard, who watched with good-natured indifference as I buttoned my bindings and sped off into a morning, a bright sky, a golden sun, a fluffy white valley that were all mine.

After finishing a ten-mile ski to the river and back, I returned to the inn to grab a bite to eat and found that things were already in full swing. The inn's inhabitants emerged en masse to warm themselves in the sun. The kid and Bucephalus were eviscerating the fresh snow drifts, to the delight of onlookers. Steam rose off both of them. The now coatless youth counselor, who turned out to be a sharp-faced and emaciated type in his mid-thirties, was hooting as he traced figure eights around the inn—though never venturing too far out. Even Mr. Du Barnstoker had perched himself on a pair of skis and was already so coated in snow that he looked like a weary and incredibly tall snowman. As for Olaf the Viking, he was practically dancing on his skis. I felt pang of jealousy when I saw that he was a real master. Mrs. Moses in an elegant fur cape looked down over everything from the inn's flat roof, as did Mr. Moses with his waistcoat and inevitable mug, and the owner, who was explaining something to them both. I looked around for Mr. Simone. The great physicist had to be around here somewhere—I had heard his barking neigh from three miles away. And there he was: saluting me from the top of a totally smooth telephone pole.