Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

The maître d’, who could not help overhearing the conversation, assured them that Swiss roads were the best roads in the world. He went into the hotel and emerged seconds later with the concierge, who bolstered the maître d’s opinion of Swiss engineering skill. The concierge was a Frenchman, he claimed, and was therefore unbiased by patriotism. By this time, the two German officers — a colonel and a lieutenant — felt compelled to enter the discussion and give their own Teutonic assurances to the visiting ladies. As Julia and Millie listened in stunned fascination, the four men began deciding on the best route to take into Domodossola.

“Who will be doing the driving?” the German colonel asked.

“I will,” Julia said.

“Very well, Fräulein . It is not a dangerous drive. There are very good passes. From where did you come, please?”

“Lausanne,” Julia said.

“Ah, then you have driven through these mountains, and there is nothing between here and Italy which should frighten you.”

“How many passes are there?” Julia asked.

“Two. The Grimsel Pass, and later the Simplon. Neither will give you any trouble.”

“I think we should put the car on a train,” Millie said. “I understand we can do that.”

“Yes, Fräulein , but the closest place to do that would be at Kandersteg, and this would involve mountain driving over roads which are not too good. You would do well to take the Grimsel Pass and then drive down the valley to Brig. Then, if you do not feel like attempting the Simplon, you can put your car on the train in Brig.”

“Yes, that is good,” the concierge said. “That is what you should do. Here, I will mark it for you.”

“But the ladies are afraid of driving,” the lieutenant said.

“No, I’m not afraid,” Julia said.

“They would do better driving to Kandersteg,” the lieutenant said.

“Nonsense, there is nothing to be frightened of,” the colonel said, and Millie cringed a little at his tone of command. “You will drive directly out of Interlaken, and you will go through the Grimsel Pass. It is a lovely drive. There are goats. You will love it.”

“Yes,” the concierge said. “And then you will come down into the Rhone Valley. It is beautiful, beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” the colonel said.

“And into Brig,” the maître d’ said. “And at Brig you will put the car onto a train and go into Italy that way.”

“Yes, that is best,” the concierge said.

“Be sure to purchase first-class tickets,” the lieutenant said. “On the train. Be sure to ask for first class.”

“Write it down. On the edge of the map,” the colonel said. “First-class tickets. The ladies should not forget.”

“I will write it,” the concierge said. “And I will mark the route. You will love it. What are you driving?”

“A Simca,” Julia supplied.

“That is good for the mountains. You will have no trouble.”

“You will leave early in the morning,” the colonel said. “It will be a lovely trip. It is settled, is it not?”

“Why, yes, I suppose so,” Millie said.

“Very well. Bon voyage. ” He clicked his heels, clapped his comrade on the shoulder, and led him back to their own table.

They awoke early the next day. They had breakfast on the small balcony overlooking the main street of the town with the mist-shrouded mountain in the distance. Occasionally, one of the town’s ancient carriages creaked by, but the streets were almost deserted. A man carrying a bundle of wood on his shoulders walked past, glanced up at them, waved briefly and continued down the street, his boots clattering on the empty pavement. They fueled the car and headed into the mountains toward Brienz, the first big town marked on their map. Millie insisted on filling a gallon bottle with water.

“It’s the radiator that causes all the trouble,” she said. “The radiator overheats.”

To Julia, sitting behind the wheel as town after town fell behind them, the mountains were a challenge. She could not have explained this accurately to Millie, but there was something terribly unwomanly about the act of putting the car on a train and allowing it to be carried into Italy. It was the feminine thing to do, perhaps, but not the womanly thing — and, to Julia, there was a difference. She was frightened. She would have been lying to herself if she’d pretended the narrow winding steep road did not frighten her. The road was cut into the side of the mountain, and she could not thoroughly understand the principle because she had always imagined that a road went completely around a mountain until it reached the top, instead of climbing it on one face in a succession of zigzagging stages. She learned very rapidly that every time the car completed one of the stages, it ended on the opposite side of the road, so that the trip up was a constant shifting from the side of the road that hugged the mountain itself and the side that hugged nothing but thin air. She felt fairly secure when she navigated the inboard stretches, but the rim of the road terrified her. It seemed to hang out over open space. Nothing separated the road from the surrounding mist except a series of very small, evenly spaced boulders. The boulders, perhaps a foot each in height and length, were painted white and placed on the outer rim of the road at six-foot intervals. She was sure the boulders were there only as guides; they certainly could not have prevented any automobile from hurtling over the edge. The higher they climbed, the steeper the drop became, and the thicker the mist, until finally they were driving in a blinding rain. The road seemed to slope in one direction and the surrounding mountains in another. She had the craziest feeling of being trapped in a Dali world of tilting geometric shapes with rain and mist obscuring vision and presenting a wiper-slashed dream effect. Millie began coughing the moment they hit the rain. She hunched against the door of the car, alternately on the inside of the road, alternately on the side that overhung the drop. She would not look down. She coughed into her handkerchief and she stared straight through the windshield as the wipers hacked at the rain. She did not say a word. Every time one of the buses let out its terrible horn blast, she jumped with a start, and then coughed again, and shrank deeper into the seat.

The buses combined with the road and the rain and the sharply sloping angles to lend a nightmare quality to the ride, adding sound to the landscape, a terrible alarming sound like the bleat of a wounded bull, strident on the mountain air, a sound that materialized from nowhere, a sound impossible to locate, ahead, behind, where? And then the bus itself would appear, either racing past on the opposite side of the road or coming suddenly from behind, swinging out past the driver’s side of the car, clearing the fenders by inches, the horn bleating every moment of the way, while Julia clung tightly to the wheel and prayed God she wouldn’t be sideswiped and sent hurtling through those puny boulders down the face of the mountain.

They began to see the goat signs. The signs were painted onto the rock walls of the mountain. They were painted in white, and there were no words, simply drawings, unmistakable pictures of goats. The signs frightened Julia because now, besides having to worry about the rain and the road and the buses, she also had to worry about animals suddenly crossing the road. She made up her mind that she would hit any goat that got in her path rather than swerve to avoid him. She was frightened, but she was also excited and exhilarated. Her hair had come loose and clung wetly to her forehead and her cheeks. Her face was flushed. She had unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, and she could feel drops of perspiration as they trickled past her throat and between her breasts. She had long ago down-shifted to second, and she drove in that gear constantly now, listening for the sound of the buses, beginning to know whether they were coming from ahead or behind. There was, too, she realized, at least a two-foot safety margin between her and the edge of the road when she was driving on the outside. She was beginning to get the feel of the auto, to know its width and its length, and the sound of its engine. The first goats they saw were huddled against the side of the road, protected from the rain by an overhanging rock ledge. Julia smiled when they passed them.