Arkady Strugatsky - The Dead Mountaineer's Inn

"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.

4.

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.