Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

H e had been skiing since early morning, and he was ready to stop and have lunch in the village, but Mac said, “Let’s do one more before eating,” and since it was Mac’s last day, Robert agreed to go up again. The weather was spotty, but there were occasional clear patches of sky, and the visibility had been good enough to make for decent skiing for most of the morning. The teleferique was crowded and they had to push their way in among the bright sweaters and anaracs and the bulky packs of the people who were carrying picnic lunches and extra clothing and skins for climbing. The doors were closed and the cabin swung out of the station, over the belt of pine trees at the base of the mountain.

The passengers were packed in so tightly that it was hard to reach for a handkerchief or light a cigarette. Robert was pressed, not unpleasurably, against a handsome young Italian woman with a dissatisfied face, who was explaining to someone over Robert’s shoulder why Milan was such a miserable city to live in in the wintertime. “Milano si trova in un bacino deprimente,” the woman said, “bagnato dalla pioggia durante tre mesi all’anno. E, nonostante il loro gusto per l’opera, i Milanesi non sono altro volgari materialisti che solo il denaro interessa,” and Robert knew enough Italian to understand that the girl was saying that Milan was in a dismal basin which was swamped by rain for three months a year and that the Milanese, despite their taste for opera, were crass and materialistic and interested only in money.

Robert smiled. Although he had not been born in the United States, he had been a citizen since 1944, and it was pleasant to hear, in the heart of Europe, somebody else besides Americans being accused of materialism and a singular interest in money.

“What’s the Contessa saying?” Mac whispered, across the curly red hair of a small Swiss woman who was standing between Robert and Mac. Mac was a lieutenant on leave from his outfit in Germany. He had been in Europe nearly three years and to show that he was not just an ordinary tourist, called all pretty Italian girls Contessa. Robert had met him a week before, in the bar of the hotel they were both staying at. They were the same kind of skiers, adventurous and looking for difficulties, and they had skied together every day, and they were already planning to come back at the same time for the next winter’s holiday, if Robert could get over again from America.

“The Contessa is saying that in Milan all they’re interested in is money,” Robert said, keeping his voice low, although in the babble of conversation in the cabin there was little likelihood of being overheard.

“If I was in Milan,” Mac said, “and she was in Milan, I’d be interested in something else besides money.” He looked with open admiration at the Italian girl. “Can you find out what run she’s going to do?”

“What for?” Robert asked.

“Because that’s the run I’m going to do,” Mac said, grinning. “I plan to follow her like her shadow.”

“Mac,” Robert said, “don’t waste your time. It’s your last day.”

“That’s when the best things always happen,” Mac said. “The last day.” He beamed, huge, overt, uncomplicated, at the Italian girl. She took no notice of him. She was busy now complaining to her friend about the natives of Sicily.

The sun came out for a few minutes and it grew hot in the cabin, with some forty people jammed, in heavy clothing, in such a small space, and Robert half-dozed, not bothering to listen any more to the voices speaking in French, Italian, English, Schweizerdeutsch, German, on all sides of him. Robert liked being in the middle of this informal congress of tongues. It was one of the reasons that he came to Switzerland to ski, whenever he could take the time off from his job. In the angry days through which the world was passing, there was a ray of hope in this good-natured polyglot chorus of people who were not threatening each other, who smiled at strangers, who had collected in these shining white hills merely to enjoy the innocent pleasures of sun and snow.

The feeling of generalized cordiality that Robert experienced on these trips was intensified by the fact that most of the people on the lifts and on the runs seemed more or less familiar to him. Skiers formed a kind of loose international club and the same faces kept turning up year after year in Mégève, Davos, St. Anton, Val d’Isère, so that after a while you had the impression you knew almost everybody on the mountain. There were four or five Americans whom Robert was sure he had seen at Stowe at Christmas and who had come over in one of the chartered ski-club planes that Swissair ran every winter on a cut-rate basis. The Americans were young and enthusiastic and none of them had ever been in Europe before and they were rather noisily appreciative of everything—the Alps, the food, the snow, the weather, the appearance of the peasants in their blue smocks, the chic of some of the lady skiers and the skill and good looks of the instructors. They were popular with the villagers because they were so obviously enjoying themselves. Besides, they tipped generously, in the American style, with what was, to Swiss eyes, an endearing disregard of the fact that a service charge of fifteen percent was added automatically to every bill that was presented to them. Two of the girls were very attractive, in a youthful, prettiest-girl-at-the-prom way, and one of the young men, a lanky boy from Philadelphia, the informal leader of the group, was a beautiful skier, who guided the others down the runs and helped the dubs when they ran into difficulties.

The Philadelphian, who was standing near Robert, spoke to him as the cabin swung high over a steep snowy face of the mountain. “You’ve skied here before, haven’t you?” he said.

“Yes,” said Robert, “a few times.”

“What’s the best run down this time of day?” the Philadelphian asked. He had the drawling, flat tone of the good New England schools that Europeans use in their imitations of upper-class Americans when they wish to make fun of them.

“They’re all okay today,” Robert said.

“What’s this run everybody says is so good?” the boy asked. “The … the Kaiser something or other?”

“The Kaisergarten,” Robert said. “It’s the first gully to the right after you get out of the station on top.”

“Is it tough?” the boy asked.

“It’s not for beginners,” Robert said.

“You’ve seen this bunch ski, haven’t you?” The boy waved vaguely to indicate his friends. “Do you think they can make it?”

“Well,” Robert said doubtfully, “there’s a narrow steep ravine full of bumps halfway down, and there’re one or two places where it’s advisable not to fall, because you’re liable to keep on sliding all the way, if you do.…”

“Aah, we’ll take a chance,” the Philadelphian said. “It’ll be good for their characters. Boys and girls,” he said, raising his voice, “the cowards will stay on top and have lunch. The heroes will come with me. We’re going to the Kaisergarten.…”

“Francis,” one of the pretty girls said. “I do believe it is your sworn intention to kill me on this trip.”

“It’s not as bad as all that,” Robert said, smiling at the girl, to reassure her.

“Say,” the girl said, looking interestedly at Robert, “haven’t I seen you someplace before?”

“On this lift, yesterday,” Robert said.

“No.” The girl shook her head. She had on a black, fuzzy, lambskin hat, and she looked like a high-school drum majorette pretending to be Anna Karenina. “Before yesterday. Someplace.”