Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“I don’t like Coca-Cola.”

“Used to be one of the leading British colonies,” he said, grinning. “Switzerland. But we lost it, along with India. Before the war, in this town, the English covered the hills like the edelweiss. If you wanted to find a Swiss between January 1st and March 13th, you had to hunt with dogs.”

“Were you here before the war?” Constance asked, surprised.

“With my mother. She broke a leg a year.”

“Is she here now?”

“No,” he said. “She’s dead.”

I must be careful, Constance thought, avoiding looking at the man beside her, not to ask people in Europe about their relatives. So many of them turn out to be dead.

“It used to be very gay,” he said, “the hotels swarming, and dances every night, and everybody dressing for dinner, and singing ‘God Save the King’ on New Year’s. Did you know it was going to be this quiet?”

“Yes,” Constance said. “I asked the man at the travel bureau in Paris.”

“Oh. What did he say?”

“He said everybody was a serious skier here and went to bed by ten o’clock.”

The Englishman glanced at her momentarily. “You’re not a serious skier, are you?”

“No. I’ve only been two or three times before.”

“You’re not one of the delicate ones, are you?”

“Delicate?” Constance looked at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” he said, “the advertisements. Schools for delicate children. Swiss for t.b.”

Constance laughed. “Do I look as though I have t.b.?”

He regarded her gravely, and she felt plump and unaustere and a little too bosomy in her tight clothes. “No,” he said. “But you never can tell. Did you ever read The Magic Mountain? ”

“Yes,” she said, feeling proud that she could show she was not completely uncultured, although American and very young, and remembering that she had skipped the philosophic discussions and cried over the death of the cousin. “I read it. Why?”

“The sanitarium it was written about isn’t far from here,” Pritchard said. “I’ll show it to you someday when the snow’s bad. Do you think this place is sad?”

“No,” she said, surprised. “Why?”

“Some people do. The mixture. The pretty mountains and the healthy types walloping down the hills, risking their necks and feeling marvellous, and the people with the bad lungs hanging on, watching them and wondering if they’re ever going to leave here alive.”

“I guess I didn’t think about it,” Constance admitted honestly.

“It was worse right after the war,” he said. “There was a boom here right after the war. All the people who hadn’t eaten enough or had been living underground or in prison and who had been frightened so long—”

“Where’re they now?”

Pritchard shrugged. “Dead, discharged, or destitute,” he said. “Is it true that people refuse to die in America?”

“Yes,” she said. “It would be an admission of failure.”

He smiled and patted her gloved hand, which was clutching tightly onto the middle bar. “You mustn’t be angry that we’re jealous,” he said. “It’s the only way we can show our gratitude.” Gently, he loosened her fingers from the wood. “And you mustn’t be so tight when you ski. Not even with your fingers. You mustn’t even frown until you go in for tea. The drill is—loose, desperate, and supremely confident.”

“Is that how you are?”

“Mostly desperate,” he said.

“What are you doing on this little beginners’ slope, then?” Constance asked. “Why didn’t you take the téléphérique up to the top?”

“I twisted my ankle yesterday,” Pritchard said. “Overrated myself. The February disease. Out of control and into a gully, with a great deal of style. So today I can only do slow, majestic turns. But tomorrow we attack that one once more—” He gestured up toward the peak, half closed in by fog, with the sun a wet, pale ball above it, making it look forbidding and dangerous. “Come along?” He looked at her inquiringly.

“I haven’t been up there yet,” Constance said, regarding the mountain respectfully. “I’m afraid it’s a little too much for me so far.”

“You must always do things that are a little too much for you,” he said. “On skis. Otherwise, where’s the fun?”

They were silent for several moments, moving slowly up the hill, feeling the wind cut across their faces, noticing the quiet and the queer, fogged mountain light. Twenty yards ahead of them, on the preceding bar, a girl in a yellow parka moved evenly upward like a bright, patient doll.

“Paris?” Pritchard said.

“What’s that?” He jumps around entirely too much, Constance thought, feeling heavy.

“You said you came from Paris. Are you one of those nice people who come here to give us your government’s money?”

“No,” said Constance. “I just came over on a—well, on a vacation. I live in New York, really. And French food makes me break out.”

He looked at her critically. “You look completely unbroken out now,” he said. “You look like the girls who advertise soap and beer in American magazines.” Then he added hastily. “If that’s considered insulting in your country, I take it back.”

“And the men in Paris,” she said.

“Oh. Are there men in Paris?”

“Even in the museums. They follow you. With homburg hats. Looking at you as though they’re weighing you by the pound. In front of religious pictures and everything.”

“Girl I knew, English girl,” Pritchard said, “was followed from Prestwick, Scotland, to the tip of Cornwall by an American gunner in 1944. Three months. No religious pictures, though, as far as I know.”

“You know what I mean. It’s an impolite atmosphere,” she said primly, knowing he was making fun of her in that straight-faced English way but not knowing whether to be offended or not.

“Were you brought up in a convent?”

“No.”

“It’s amazing how many American girls sound as though they were brought up in a convent. Then it turns out they drink gin and roar in bars. What do you do at night?”

“Where? At home?”

“No. I know what people do at night in America. They look at television,” he said. “I mean here.”

“I—I wash my hair,” she said defensively, feeling foolish. “And I write letters.”

“How long are you staying up here?”

“Six weeks.”

“Six weeks.” He nodded, and swung his poles to his outside hand, because they were nearing the top. “Six weeks of shining hair and correspondence.”

“I made a promise,” she said, thinking, I might as well let him know now, just in case he’s getting any ideas. “I promised someone I’d write him a letter a day while I was gone.”

Pritchard nodded soberly, as though sympathizing with her. “Americans,” he said as they came to the top and slid out from the T bar onto the flat place. “Americans baffle me.”

Then he waved his poles at her and went straight down the hill, his red sweater a swift, diminishing gay speck against the blue-shadowed snow.

The sun slipped between the peaks, like a gold coin in a gigantic slot, and the light got flat and dangerous, making it almost impossible to see the bumps. Constance made her last descent, falling twice and feeling superstitious, because it was always when you said, “Well, this is the last one,” that you got hurt.

Running out and coming to a stop on the packed snow between two farmhouses at the outskirts of the town, she kicked off her skis with a sense of accomplishment and relief. Her toes and fingers were frozen, but she was warm everywhere else and her cheeks were bright red and she breathed the thin, cold air with a mountain sense of tasting something delicious. She felt vigorous and friendly, and smiled at the other skiers clattering to a stop around her. She was brushing the snow of the last two falls off her clothes, so that she would look like a good skier as she walked through the town, when Pritchard came down over the last ridge and flicked to a stop beside her.