The Runaway Wife

To the French muses in my life:

M.T., Pascale, Valerie, Sophie, Nathalie,

Alexandra, Isabelle, Moumoune, and Zou Zou

J
IM OLSEN, YOU ARE HERE. IN SWITZERLAND, WALKING
on the rock ledges of the Swiss Alps. If this was not the end of the world, at least it felt like it. In this moonscape ten thousand feet high, in this land of rock and rock and more rock, and sky and sky and more sky, one misguided step and Jim could plunge from one of thousands of vertiginous, crusted cliffs. The only thing that reassured Jim that he was not on a planet in a far-flung galaxy was his ability, on this clear day, to pinpoint several small patches of green that resembled colored pieces in a stained-glass window—these he knew to be farmland in the Swiss valley far, far below.

Jim had expected a movie-set Alpine cabin flush with red and orange impatiens cascading from window boxes. Instead, La Cabane des Audannes was a squat tin box that
resembled an abandoned trailer home in the Arctic. Six small square windows punctured the front of the shiny bubble. It was hard to believe that just a few days earlier, he and his college friend Ambrose had been enjoying chilled beer on a sunny veranda overlooking the lush lower Alpine meadows, with clanking bells on lolling cows as their background music.

Back in New York City, when he had searched the cabin's website, the tag line for the Cabane that had caught his eye was “
la grande aventure du sauvetage dans les Alpes
,” roughly translated as “the great adventure of rescue in the Alps.” It had seemed a strange description at the time.

Ambrose, half-French, half-American, had been trying for years to convince Jim to join him on a late-summer hike from
hutte
to
hutte
in the Bernese Alps, but Jim had always been too busy at work. Had he ever taken a vacation while he was at KKT? He'd sacrificed the bulk of his twenties, even the summers when he was in business school, to the small investment boutique that had promised him a future. Well, no time like the present.

“This hutte,” Ambrose was saying—he pronounced it
hoote
with a silent
h, “
was carried up the Geltenhorn in one piece, suspended from a military helicopter.”

Approaching the shining shelter, now unobstructed by the mountain shadow that had covered it from a distance, Jim didn't care how it had been transported. He would have stopped anywhere to escape the incessant, chafing wind and to rest his sore feet. The blisters on his left heel were bleed
ing; he cursed himself again for not heeding the advice of the saleswoman back in New York who'd suggested he break in his new boots two weeks before the trip. Jim guessed that by the time he returned to New York the following week, his boots would feel . . . well, just perfect.

Firewood burning. A pale wisp of smoke rose from the side of the metal bubble into the achingly blue late-afternoon sky. A deep breath. They were finally there. A gust of cold wind set the sign,
LA CABANE DES AUDANNES,
jangling on its chain. Jim paused on the rocky terrace outside the threshold to gaze back at the thread-thin serpentine path along the tip of the range they'd hiked for most of the day. The expanse of gray and black craggy peaks extended out of sight into the distance.

“I smell Wiener schnitzel,” said Ambrose, dashing into the hutte. Jim followed, the KKT door slamming behind him.

Inside was a world of charm and warmth. The room was alive with voices and laughter. Clusters of hikers sprawled across chairs; small round tables crowded with mugs of beer were lit with lamps with red shades, as if each table hosted a small campfire. The bleached wooden walls and floors were scrubbed clean, and the peephole windows, which from the exterior resembled insect eyes, were dressed with red-and-white-checked curtains. Even the straight-backed wooden chairs were softened by plump gingham cushions tied with bows. At the far end of the room, a fire crackled and sparked under an arched metal mantel.

Jim overheard Germans, with their hard
k
's; Aussies, with their loosened vowels; French, with their rolling
r
's. A few Italians entered the cabin behind them, with laughter and words that rippled into arias. They settled at one of the long refectory tables in the middle of the room. Despite the human commotion, the cozy scene was crisply clean, a testament to Swiss perfection.

With a smile that pumped up his already ample cheeks, Michel Acolas introduced himself as “
le capitain du chalet
.” He signed the new guests in and, pointing to the ladder at the center of the compact interior of the hutte, told them to claim their beds. As Ambrose engaged in French chatter with the
capitain
, Jim climbed the ladder. Perched on the top step, he counted thirty sheeted mattresses in a circular room that resembled the inside of a lighthouse. Three movable walls had been placed to form sections—for families, perhaps, or lovers—but otherwise, thirty hikers slept in one room. His fiancée—that is, his ex-fiancée—would have bristled at the sight.

“
Une bière?
” Ambrose asked Jim as he dropped down from the ladder.

“Sure,” said Jim.

“Don't look so excited.”

“Thinking of Sally.”

“One minute on your own, and you're back to your old, destructive ruminations! Nothing a cold beer can't handle.”

Ambrose addressed a young waiter whose bulbous nose resembled that of Monsieur Acolas. It had to be his son.
They followed him to one of the few open tables near the fire.

“What beautiful women,” Ambrose said, nodding at the next table as they took their seats. The three, the only women in the room, were an unlikely trio in the midst of the mostly bearded male hikers; Jim was surprised he hadn't noticed them earlier. They leaned in toward one another with the intensity of people telling secrets.

When the frosted mugs of beers arrived at their small table, so, surprisingly, did one of the young women. She was smiling, tall and slender, with dark, wavy hair that fell below her shoulders, and she carried a half-full glass of red wine. She introduced herself to them in English; Jim forgot her name as soon as they'd shaken hands.

“Please join us,” Ambrose said, standing and offering her his chair. “Ambrose Vincelles.
Enchanté.
”

In their college days, Ambrose had merely to open his mouth—Jim was convinced it was his French-American accent—for women to appear at his side. Eight years out of college seemed not to have diminished his appeal.

“Thalia Castellane,” she said to Jim as if she had guessed that her name needed repeating. He pulled up another chair.

She placed her glass on their table and sat in the chair Ambrose had offered, crossing her long legs. She had deep-set blue eyes, the lightness of which he had never seen before, a long, slim nose; curvaceous lips; and an angular jaw. Her face looked sculpted.

“Forgive me,” began Ambrose, “I know this sounds
sexist, but before you glided over to our table I was asking myself how three beautiful women ended up in this remote tin-can cabin at the very end of the world at the very end of the hiking season.”

Thalia laughed, throwing back her head of thick hair. “In your world, I suppose beauty must be preserved in a jar,” she said.

Jim detected a British accent on top of the French one.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, with beauty like yours—”

“What should be preserved in a jar,” interrupted Jim, “is Ambrose. The label would read:
THE LAST LIVING ROMANTIC
.”

“Those are my sisters,” the woman said, pointing at the two women at the nearby table, who were deep in conversation. Their new friend seemed to desire her sisters' company.

“No, really,” said Ambrose, “what brings you here?”

“I'm sure the same thing that brought all of us to this funny little metal cigarette lighter! The vigor of the mountains, the way they compel you”—she raised her arms above her head—“upward and upward until you see them kiss the sky like a lover.” She dropped her hands and winked at Jim. “As a child, I would sit all day long and watch the shadows of clouds on this graphite mountain canvas. The mountains are art in constant motion.”

“You know them well,” said Ambrose.

“Our mother is half-Swiss, half-French; our father, French,” said Thalia, leaning forward. “
Maman
grew up in these Alps during the summers, as did we when we visited
our grandparents, our mother's parents, who had a chalet in the valley of the Elghorn, just above Gstaad. Sadly for us, they sold the chalet two years ago. We hike up here every few years, but—oh, did you just hear that howling wind? My sisters and I prefer the lower Alps.”

“Your English, it's so fluent,” Jim said.

“
Merci
,” she said, nodding and smiling broadly at Jim. The red wine had stained her lips, which made her smile seem brighter. “Educated in England. You're American, aren't you?” She squinted at him as if she were a buyer surveying a parcel of land.

“I suppose my accent gave me away.”

“Excuse Jim,” interrupted Ambrose. “He's never been out of the States. Jim, in case you haven't noticed, you stand leagues taller than most of the men in the room—your football days aren't that far behind you. In addition to your very American accent, you have a look in your eyes that the world is yours, or
could
be yours at any moment—and that, my friend, among Europeans, is American.”

A certain “American” look? Since when had Ambrose fallen prey to stereotyping? Thalia leaned back and placed her arms behind her head, a gesture that seemed unnatural, as if she were posing.

“Don't tell me you speak no French?” she asked, directing her large eyes at Jim.

“Only a little. In the suburban town outside Chicago where I grew up,” Jim said, “French people are considered an exotic species. I took French in high school and for a year
in college, but not until this trip have I understood the merits of a fluent second language.”

As Ambrose chronicled their trek up the Wildhorn in French, Jim watched the restless Thalia shift in her seat. Would she ever stop moving? There. She finally settled, as would a butterfly, perched on the edge of her chair.

It was amazing how Ambrose could ramble—especially in French, with a beautiful woman. As he watched them converse, Jim concluded that his college pal had been right: this mountain trek up the Wildhorn had been a welcome distraction for him after months of brooding about his lost love and job. He would start his new job on September 8, in ten days.

“Voilà,” said Monsieur Acolas, his face rosy from tending the fire. He placed onto their table two wineglasses and a bottle of red wine that Jim and Ambrose had not ordered. He uncorked the bottle, poured two glasses, and refilled Thalia's glass. The monsieur tilted his chin in the direction of Thalia's sisters' table.

“A gift,” he said in English with his thick accent.

“From your sisters?” Ambrose asked the young woman, who nodded.

“How unusual,” said Jim.

“I think my sisters wish to get you two drunk,” said Thalia, raising her glass with a smile and a wink, again at Jim.

“I like the way your sisters are thinking,” Jim said, lift
ing his glass to match hers in the air. “But
we
should have sent a bottle to
their
table.”

A frigid wind tunneled into the room along with a long string of men—Jim counted fifteen—dressed in folkloric Alpine gear, some bearded, some mustached, most wearing green feathered caps, green jackets or vests, and black pants. They lined up in front of the fireplace and, with no introduction, began to yodel. The small room resembled an accordion, the bellows swelling and compressing in rhythm; the music had a mournful, nostalgic tone. To complete the picture, tears appeared on the stubbled, wrinkled cheek of the elderly vocalist at the end of the line. As the band of men segued into the Swiss national anthem, hikers began to clap along.

Ambrose leaned over the table to tell Jim that the troupe traveled across the Alps.

“They stop at each hutte only once a year,” yelled Ambrose above the singing. “After this, they'll probably sing at the Geltenhütte. How lucky we are that they're here this late in the season!”

After the yodelers finished and they scattered, Ambrose suggested that Thalia invite her sisters to join them. Thalia jumped up quickly, as if she'd been waiting for the invitation. Within moments Thalia's two sisters were tableside, wineglasses in hand. As Jim rose to fetch their chairs, he noticed that the women's strong family resemblance resided in their sharp chins and the lush curve of their lips.

Jim refilled the wineglasses. He guessed that the oldest was the sister who now introduced herself as Clio. She was tall, around five feet eleven, and had wide cheekbones and startlingly white teeth, gleaming perhaps because of her suntan. Her dark-brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, emphasizing her high forehead. She appeared to be the opposite of the impetuous Thalia; her movements and bearing were measured and self-contained, as if she rationed them.

The last sister to arrive at the table extended her hand awkwardly, as if it were an unnatural gesture. In a light voice, she introduced herself as Hélène
.

She was clearly the youngest of the sisters, blonde to their brunette; her hair looked as if she'd cut it herself. Jim had the impression that she'd worked hard to underplay her prettiness. The measure hadn't worked: the haircut accentuated her very long neck and narrow shoulders.

She was a shy yet stirring beauty, but as she greeted them, her face grew animated. Was she staring at Jim? Her hazel eyes asked questions.

“
Three Sisters
!” said Ambrose playfully. “I feel like I'm in the Chekhov play! Olga, Masha, and Irina stuck in the provinces, yearning for Moscow. But perhaps in this case you're yearning for Paris?”

“We
are
yearning,” said Helene quickly, “but not for a city.” Her voice seemed to erupt from her, and she looked surprised at the sound.