The Paper Men (5 page)

“Hopefully in this encounter situation.”

Quite quickly sanity returned to me. They had been to the “quaint old house”. So this meeting was not accidental. They had wheedled my postes restantes out of Elizabeth, if not my agent. I was Rick’s special subject. I was his raw material, the ore in his mine, his farm, his lobster pots.

But where was he getting the money to come in pursuit? Such things are expensive, as I knew from an early attempt to get some letters back.

I thought of this girl, Mary Lou, with the transparent face of that beauty which must surely be holy and wise. Not like the poor old padre!

“Born again perhaps.”

The girl you meet every seven—no, every fourteen years, the one you meet, in fact, when it is all too late. I saw my sudden exhilaration for what it was, the symptom of my near-senility. I guessed how my breath must already stink of the morning’s Dôle. There might be much in this for Rick. There might be something in it for Mary Lou, opportunity to admire with distaste someone whose books she had read. But there could be nothing in it for me but fixation, frustration, folly and grief. I determined to sear this tiny bud of the future before it was in leaf. Let them chase someone else. There were authors enough to go round after all, authors by the thousand; and all with foreheads of such brass or lives of such impenetrable rectitude they could afford the deadliest of all poisons about themselves, the simple truth. Whereas I—

Seated on the green-painted bench I endured a shower of pics out of my past. I leapt up and hurried back to the hotel. I murmured to the manager that I was in need of solitude. Smoothly he recommended the Weisswald, an apron of skiing country held up to the sun and now deserted in the off-season. I should stay at the hotel Felsenblick. The others were clean, of course, but that was all. I nodded and nodded and paid my bill, packed, filled in my forwarding address as the Hotel Bung Ho, Hongkong, and stole away.

There was a vast garage at the foot of the Weisswald and then a rock railway slanting up the hideously vertical side of the mountain. I kept my eyes shut all the way up. My fear of heights is pathological, which is perhaps why I am fascinated by them. More than that, I wanted to save the view of the high places until I got on level ground and could admire them without feeling the compulsion to jump. A porter led me, my eyes watching my feet, to the hotel. The manager had a suite, no less, at a reduced price and its balcony overhung the cliff. He threw open the door and ushered me through.

“See!”

One side of the sitting-room was french windows, with the balcony outside them. Beyond that was five miles of empty air. The manager threw open the french windows and invited me to come outside. I stood close to the glass. The balcony felt firm enough.

“It is the best,” said the manager, “really the best.”

Had I been able to walk forward three paces, I could have spat down two thousand feet, had I been able to spit.

“It is for you. A good place for a writer.”

“Who told you I am a writer?”

“My brother, the manager of the Schiff. The suite and the view is for you. Cheaply.”

I was being shepherded from one family business to another. I cast a nervous glance at the 00-gauge railway that was laid out for children half a mile below, then concentrated on the nearer pot plants. On the balcony there was that white-painted iron table I had sat at in the Schiff, four white-painted chairs and a white-painted
chaise-longue.

“My car will be safe? It was unlocked.”

“The car, sir?”

“The garage.”

“Both will be safe, locked or unlocked.”

There was a pause. The view was changing minute by minute. A white line divided a black cliff below a mile-high iced cake.

“What is that?”

“Where, sir?”

“There.”

“The Spurli. It is a waterfall. At the moment, with little snow left, it is a thread. It comes from that valley up there where our army conducted manoeuvres—”

“Up there? Impossible!”

“To tell you the truth, I was there. I do so each year. I am a major. Then—a word of necessary advice. I should not try to walk for a day or two.”

“You mean I should acclimatize?”

“That is the English usage, is it not? Our American guests say ‘Acclimate’.”

“But I’ve been in the Zurich area.”

The manager made a dismissive gesture, as if the difference between Zurich and the English Channel was too small to be noticed.

“Nevertheless, you are not in your first youth, Mr Barclay, and a day or two of rest is advisable.”

“I shall remember.”

“And with our view before you, we shall hope to be the source, not to say the inspiration, of some notable creation, sir. This is the bell. Our pleasure is to serve you.”

The manager bowed himself out. I moved forward a little. I did not look down over the railing—a gesture for heroes. I pulled the
chaise-longue
as far from the railings as possible, wrapped myself in a vast duvet from the bedroom, stretched myself out and contemplated the view. It continued to change, to reveal further fantasies of rock or snow. It revealed slopes where there had apparently been caverns, turned the black cliff that had been a backdrop to the Spurli first to grey then brown. I lay, inviting nature to astonish me. It did so, moderately, as usual. For the manager was wrong, of course. I had been in too many places, had seen too many extravagances. In any case, marvellous views don’t get writers or painters going. They just give them an excuse for doing nothing. If anything, a marvellous view gets in a writer’s way. It engages him to it. So I watched, as peaks appeared beyond what I had thought was there and a nearer one proved to be a white cloud. But we have seen the set pieces, the Himalayas, the Andes, the Sahara, storms at sea, cloudless, moonless nights unpolluted by the glow from cities, we have seen underwater fantasies and rain forests—ha et cetera. What a writer needs is a brick wall, rendered if possible, so that he can’t see through it into a landscape suggested by the surface. I saw this would be another wasted week.

Nevertheless, thinking these thoughts and drinking more Dôle, I watched a bit of Switzerland for hours on end. Was I, I asked myself, a romantic after all? I did not think so. The thing led nowhere, the pleasure was an end in itself, brought forth no lofty or spiritual thoughts. It was the higher hedonism, a man becoming his own eyes. Late in the afternoon the Dôle and the hyperoxygenated air did their work and I fell asleep.

I awoke with the sun lowering itself round the westward limit of the balcony. My head seemed clear of Dôle despite the empty bottle. Was it the view? I played with the childish idea of adding a verse to Shelley’s poem, this time celebrating the mountains as a cure for
gueule-de-bois,
like Chartres cathedral. With that thought my trancelike emptiness before Mother Nature filled with desire for a drink. I unwrapped from my duvet, visited the bathroom and went in search of the bar which was conveniently to hand. I wished to punish myself for the Dôle and ordered a hideous concoction of my own which contains, among other things, Alka-Seltzer and Fernet Branca. In appearance it resembles diarrhoea. Even the manager, doubling now as barman, was appalled. Nor did he understand my remark that I was punishing a bottle of Dôle but he accepted it and did as he was bid. I was flagellating my palate with my nasty drink, congratulating myself on my direct appreciation of natural beauty and celebrating my escape from the dangers of emotionalism into steady peace when a tall and massive figure stood at my shoulder.

It was of course, as I should have expected, Assistant Professor Rick L. Tucker of the University of Astrakhan, Neb. He was rigged in outdoor costume,
Lederhosen
, long socks with dazzling tops and boots so thick in the sole they seemed to have brought lumps of pavement with them. His shirt was open at the neck under a pullover with the inscription
OLE ASHCAN
knitted into it. I thought for a moment he was being defiant about that dustbin he’d rummaged so many years ago—well, seven long years ago. But the inscription was no more than a winsome joke at the expense of the place where he was earning his lolly. The letters spread right across his chest, which was wide. The glow of mountain air about him, as expressed by his cheeks and the tip of his nose, made him seem wider and taller than ever. I had to look a long way up at him. When I turned to him with the first movement of indignation he drew his chin back only minimally.

“Hi, Wilf! I see you had the same idea as we did!”

“Don’t be wet.”

“Mary Lou, look who’s here!”

I stared round the bar. Mary Lou smiled pallidly from the lap of a huge armchair in a dark corner.

“Hi, Mary Lou.”

“Mr Barclay.”

“Wilf.”

She made no reply but looked withdrawn. I had that sudden feeling that all the preciousness of life had condensed itself—no, no, it must not be, could not be!

“Your juice, hon.”

“I guess I don’t even feel like juice, hon.”

Rick turned back to me.

“Mary Lou is feeling the altitude.”

“A girl for sea level.”

I took my eyes away, deliberately.

“Hon?”

I looked back despite myself. Mary Lou had her hands over her mouth. Her large eyes became huge. She struggled to get out of the chair.

“Can’t you see, you fool? She’s going to throw up!”

Mary Lou threw up halfway between the chair and the door. Rick made a kind of triangular dash to the bar with glasses and to the door. Mary Lou disappeared through it. The manager looked dispassionately at the mess. He shouted through the open door at the back of the bar and, as if she had been waiting for the event, a fat, grey-haired woman emerged through it with mop and pail. Rick dutifully pursued Mary Lou to wherever their room was. I contemplated the sick with the detachment of a man who was drinking something even worse. I took my filthy mixture and wandered out of the hotel into the sunset. There were round metal tables (the same ones I always sit at) in the little square where one side was the hideous drop. I sat at the table I had sat at in, say, Florence, Paris, St Louis. Where was I? Moving, always moving. It was the manager of the hotel in Schwillen. I simply hadn’t covered my tracks. Next time—

I got up, strolled a few yards up the path that led to the higher meadows and felt a deadly weakness. I was just able to reach my chair and table again. Time passed.

Rick was sitting by me and talking. I didn’t know how long he had been there. He was sketching out the immediate future. There were said to be four splendid walks we could take. He would explore while I spent the day acclimating. He didn’t need to acclimate, having been used to heights all his life. They said that one of the walks involved a little scrambling. I sat back in the chair, nodding at what he said and my chin hit my chest.

Mary Lou was coming down the path from the high, flowery slopes. She was talking about solid geometry and explaining the three fundamental curves of the calculus by reference to the immense cone of mountain that stood over us.

Someone blew an alphorn, right there in the square.

“Wilf? Sir?”

I was the alphorn and blew myself again with another enormous honk.

“Asleep.”

I blinked back into the sunset. The station was absorbing a procession of Swiss, German, Austrian walkers. They all seemed as wide as they were high. Rick was laughing.

“You said Mary Lou majored in math! Mary Lou!”

“Dreamed I was an alphorn. Pretty girl. Congratulations.”

“She admires you.”

“She like me?”

Pause.

“Hell, yes!”

“She play chess?”

“Hell, no!”

“Checkers?”

“You’ll both be OK. By morning. By this evening.”

“Dinner.”

“Yeah,” said Rick baldly, “we’d like to have you eat with us.”

I felt ever so slightly embarrassed.

“This one’s on me.”

The three of us appeared to be the only people staying at the hotel, midweek and out of season. At dinner Mary Lou remained pale and ate next to nothing. But Rick talked for all three. The walk he’d explored had the damnedest views. Truly inspirational. Streams, trees, the treeline, flowers. After I had grasped that we were going to walk tomorrow I ceased to listen and endured my preoccupation with Mary Lou instead. She didn’t seem much interested in what Rick was saying either. She stood up suddenly, so that oddly enough I got to her before Rick, who had been talking about the snowline. He took her from me and led her away. When he came back he apologized for her, which amused me all down one side of my face.

“She’s enchanting, Rick. I thought it was a literary convention but, you know, when she feels faint she doesn’t go green and ancient—she just goes even more transparent.”

“She said she wouldn’t go with us tomorrow.”

“Doesn’t she like anything? I mean—”

“You could say,” said Rick carefully, “Mary Lou isn’t physical.”

“Cats? Dogs? Horses?”

He blushed, a slow burn.

“You were there, Rick, the two of you. Recently.”

“It’s a place where you lived for a long time, Wilf.”

I thought of the place where I had lived for a long time. The only place. The quaint old house, the water meadows, trees, hedges, bare downs closing in the two sides of the wide valley, the huge oaks and clumps of elms that Elizabeth said were dying. I felt detached.

“Did you like it?”

“Hell, yes!”

“Why?”

I never thought to hear a grown man say it, but he did.

“It’s so green. That white horse cut in the side of the hill—everything’s so ancient—”

“When I was there last they had motocross up the hill on one side of the White Horse on Sundays. The university archaeological society was skinning the turf on the other.”

“But the people, Wilf! The customs—”

“Incest, mostly.”

“You’re—”

“No, I’m not kidding. And don’t forget the coven.”

“You are, you are, yes you are, Wilf!”

“Usually reliable sources. Wilfred Barclay’s Stratford-on-Avon.”