The Apple Tree: a short novel & several long stories Page 6

  It was with a shock of surprise that I came finally upon the village, for I had pictured it at least another hour away. I must have climbed at a great pace, for it was barely four o'clock. The village wore a forlorn, almost deserted appearance, and I judged that today there were few remaining inhabitants. Some of the dwellings were boarded up, others fallen in and partly destroyed. Smoke came only from two or three of them, and I saw no one working in the pasture-land around. A few cows, lean-looking and unkempt, grazed by the side of the track, the jangling bells around their necks sounding hollow somehow in the still air. The place had a sombre, depressing effect, after the stimulation of the climb. If this was where I must spend the night I did not think much of it.

  I went to the door of the first dwelling that had a thin wisp of smoke coming from the roof and knocked upon the door. It was opened, after some time, by a lad of about fourteen, who after one look at me called over his shoulder to somebody within. A man of about my own age, stupid-looking and heavy, came to the door. He said something to me in patois, then staring a moment, and realising his mistake, he broke, even more haltingly than I, into the language of the country.

  "You are the doctor from the valley?" he said to me.

  "No," I replied, "I am a stranger on vacation, climbing in the district. I want a bed for the night, if you can give me one."

  His face fell. He did not reply directly to my request.

  "We have someone here very sick," he said, " I do not know what to do. They said a doctor would come from the valley. You met no one?"

  "I'm afraid not. No one climbed from the valley except myself. Who is ill? A child?"

  The man shook his head. "No, no, we have no children here."

  He went on looking at me, in a dazed, helpless sort of way, and I felt sorry for his trouble, but I did not see what I could do. I had no sort of medicines upon me but a first-aid packet and a small bottle of aspirin. The aspirin might be of use, if there was fever. I undid it from my pack and gave a handful to the man.

  "These may help," I said, "if you care to try them."

  He beckoned me inside. "Please to give them yourse1f," he said.

  I had some reluctance to step within and be faced with the grim spectacle of a dying relative, but plain humanity told me I could hardly do otherwise. I followed him into the living-room. There was a trestle bed against the wall and lying upon it, covered with two blankets, was a man, his eyes closed. He was pale and unshaven, and his features had that sharp pointed look about them that comes upon the face when near to death. I went close to the bed and gazed down upon him. He opened his eyes. For a moment we stared at one another, unbelieving. Then he put out his hand to me, and smiled. It was Victor…

  "Thank God," he said.

  I was too much moved to speak. I saw him beckon to the fellow, who stood apart, and speak to him in the patois, and he must have told him we were friends, for some sort of light broke in the man's face and he withdrew. I went on standing by the trestle bed, with Victor's hand in mine.

  "How long have you been like this?" I asked at length.

  "Nearly five days," he said. "Touch of pleurisy; I've had it before. Rather worse this time. I'm getting old."

  Once again he smiled, and although I guessed him to be desperately ill he was little changed, he was the same Victor still.

  "You seem to have prospered," he said to me, still smiling, "you have all the sleek appearance of success."

  I asked him why he had never written, and what he had been doing with himself for twenty years.

  "I cut myself adrift," he said. "I gather you did the same, but in a different way. I haven't been back to England since I left. What is it that you're holding there?"

  I showed him the bottle of aspirin.

  "I'm afraid that's no use to you," I said. "The best thing I can suggest is for me to stay here tonight, and then first thing in the morning get the chap here, and one or two others, to help me carry you down to the valley."

  He shook his head. "Waste of time," he said. "I'm done for. I know that."

  "Nonsense. You need a doctor, proper nursing. That's impossible in this place." I looked around the primitive living-room, dark and airless.

  "Never mind about me," he said. "Someone else is more important."

  "Who?"

  "Anna," he said, and then as I answered nothing, at a loss for words, he added, "She's still here, you know, on Monte Verità."

  "You mean," I said, "that she's in that place, enclosed, she's never left it?"

  "That's why I'm here," said Victor. "I come every year, and have done, since the beginning. I wrote and told you, surely, after the war? I live in a little fishing port all the year round, very isolated and quiet, and then come here once in twelve months. I left it later this year, because I had been ill."

  It was incredible. What an existence, all these years, without friends, without interests, enduring the long months until the time came for this hopeless annual pilgrimage.

  "Have you ever seen her?" I asked.

  "Never."

  "Do you write to her?"

  "I bring a letter every year. I take it up with me and leave it beneath the wall, and then return the following day."

  "The letter gets taken?"

  "Always. And in its place there is a slab of stone, with writing scrawled upon it. Never more than a few words. I take the stones away with me. I have them all down on the coast, where I live."

  It was heart-rending, his faith in her, his fidelity through the years.

  "I've tried to study it," he said, "this religion, belief. It's very ancient, way back before Christianity. There are old books that hint at it. I've picked them up from time to time, and I've spoken to people, scholars, who have made a study of mysticism and the old rites of ancient Gaul, and the Druids; there's a strong link between all mountain folk of those times. In every instance that I have read there is this insistence on the power of the moon and the belief that the followers stay young and beautiful."

  "You talk, Victor, as if you believe that too," I said.

  "I do," he answered. "The children believe it, here in the village, the few that remain."

  Talking to me had tired him. He reached out for a pitcher of water that stood beside the bed.

  "Look here," I said, "these aspirins can't hurt you, they can only help, if you have fever. And you might get some sleep."

  I made him swallow three, and drew the blankets closer round him.

  "Are there any women in the house?" I asked.

  "No," he said, "I've been puzzled about that, since I've been here this time. The village is pretty much deserted. All the women and children have shifted to the valley. There are about twenty men and boys left, all told."

  "Do you know when the women and children went?"

  "I gather they left a few days before I came. This fellow here — he's the son of the old man who used to live here, who died many years ago — is such a fool that he never knows anything. He just looks vague if you question him. But he's competent, in his own way. He'll give you food, and find bedding for you, and the little chap is bright enough."

  Victor closed his eyes, and I hoped that he might sleep. I thought I knew why the women and children had left the village. It was since the girl from the valley had disappeared. They had been warned that trouble might come to Monte Verità. I did not dare tell Victor this. I wished I could persuade him to be carried down into the valley.

  By this time it was quite dark, and I was hungry. I went through a sort of recess to the back. There was no one there but the boy. I asked him for something to eat and drink, and he understood. He brought me bread, and meat, and cheese, and I ate it in the living-room, with the boy watching me. Victor's eyes were still closed and I believed he slept.

  "Will he get better?" asked the boy. He did not speak in patois.

  "I think so," I answered, "if I can get help to carry him to a doctor in the valley."

  "I will help you," said the boy, "and two of
my companions. We should go tomorrow. After that, it will be difficult."

  "Why?"

  "There will be coming and going the day after. Men from the valley, much excitement, and my companions and I will join them."

  "What is going to happen?"

  He hesitated. He looked at me with quick bright eyes.

  "I do not know," he said. He slipped away, back to the recess.

  Victor's voice came from the trestle bed.

  "What did the boy say?" he asked. "Who is coming from the valley?"

  "I don't know," I said casually, "some expedition, perhaps. But he has offered to help take you down the mountain tomorrow."

  "No expeditions ever come here," said Victor, "there must be some mistake." He called to the boy, and when the lad reappeared spoke to him in the patois. The boy was ill at ease, and diffident; he seemed reluctant now to answer questions. Several times I heard the words Monte Verità repeated, both by him and Victor. Presently he went back to the inner room and left us alone.

  "Did you understand any of that? " asked Victor.

  "No," I replied.

  "I don't like it," he said, "there's something queer. I've felt it, since I've lain here these last few days. The men look furtive, odd. He tells me there's been some disturbance in the valley, and the people there are very angry. Did you hear anything about it?"

  I did not know what to say. He was watching me closely.

  "The fellow in the inn was not very forthcoming," I said, "but he did advise against coming to Monte Verità."

  "What reason did he give?"

  "No particular reason. He just said there might be trouble."

  Victor was silent. I could feel him thinking there beside me.

  "Have any of the women disappeared from the valley?" he said.

  It was useless to lie. "I heard something about a missing girl," I told him, "but I don't know if it's true."

  "It will be true. That is it, then."

  He said nothing for a long while, and I could not see his face — it was in shadow. The room was lit by a single lamp, giving a pallid glow.

  "You must climb tomorrow and warn Anna at Monte Verità," he said at last.

  I think I had expected this. I asked him how it could be done.

  "I can sketch the track for you," he said, "you can't go wrong. It's straight up the old water-course, heading south all the while. The rains haven't made it impassable yet. If you leave before dawn you'll have all day before you."

  "What happens when I get there?"

  "You must leave a letter, as I do, and then come away. They won't fetch it while you are there. I will write, also. I shall tell Anna that I am ill here, and that you've suddenly appeared, after nearly twenty years. You know, I was thinking, just now, while you were talking to the boy, it's like a miracle. I have a strange sort of feeling Anna brought you here."

  His eyes were shining with that old boyish faith that I remembered.

  "Perhaps," I said. "Either Anna, or what you used to call my mountain fever."

  "Isn't that the same thing?" he said to me.

  We looked at one another in the silence of that small dark room, and then I turned away and called the boy to bring me bedding and a pillow. I would sleep the night on the floor by Victor's bed.

  He was restless in the night, and breathed with difficulty. Several times I got up to him and gave him more aspirin and water. He sweated much, which might be a good thing or a bad, I did not know. The night seemed endless, and for myself; I barely slept at all. We were both awake when the first darkness paled.

  "You should start now," he said, and going to him I saw with apprehension that his skin had gone clammy cold. He was worse, I was certain, and much weaker.

  "Tell Anna," he said, "that if the valley people come she and the others will be in great danger. I am sure of it."

  "I will write all that," I said.

  "She knows how much I love her. I tell her that always in my letters, but you could say so, once again. Wait in the gully. You may have to wait two hours, or even three, or longer still. Then go back to the wall and look for the answer on the slab of stone. It will be there."

  I touched his cold hand and went out into the chill morning air. Then, as I looked about me, I had my first misgiving. There was cloud everywhere. Not only beneath me, masking the track from the valley where I had come the night before, but here in the silent village, wreathing in mist the roofs of the huts, and also above me, where the path wound through scrub and disappeared upon the mountain side.

  Softly, silently, the clouds touched my face and drifted past, never dissolving, never clearing. The moisture clung to my hair and to my hands, and I could taste it on my tongue. I looked this way and that, in the half light, wondering what I should do. All the old instinct of self-preservation told me to return. To set forth, in breaking weather, was madness, to my remembered mountain lore. Yet to stay there, in the village, with Victor's eyes upon me, hopeful, patient, was more than I could stand. He was dying, we both knew it. And I carried in my breast pocket his last letter to his wife.

  I turned to the south, and still the clouds came travelling past, slowly, relentlessly, down from the summit of Monte Verità.

  I began to climb…

  Victor had told me that I should reach the summit in two hours. Less than that, with the rising sun behind me. I had also a guide, the rough sketch map that he had drawn.

  In the first hour after leaving the village I realised my error. I should never see the sun that day. The clouds drove past me, vapour in my face, clammy and cold. They hid the winding water-course up which I had climbed five minutes since, down which already came the mountain springs, loosening the earth and stones.

  By the time the contour changed, and I was free of roots and scrub and feeling my way upon bare rock, it was past midday. I was defeated. Worse still, I was lost. I turned back and could not find the water-course that had brought me so far. I approached another, but it ran north-east and had already broken for the season; a torrent of water washed away down the mountain-side. One false move, and the current would have borne me away, tearing my hands to pieces as I sought for a grip among the stones.

  Gone was my exultation of the day before. I was no longer in the thrall of mountain fever but held instead by the equally well-remembered sense of fear. It had happened in the past, many a time, the coming of cloud. Nothing renders a man so helpless, unless he can recognise every inch of the way by which he has come, and so descend. But I had been young in those days, trained, and climbing fit. Now I was a middle-aged city dweller, alone on a mountain I had never climbed before, and I was scared.

  I sat down under the lea of a great boulder, away from the drifting cloud, and ate my lunch — the remainder of sandwiches packed at the valley inn — and waited. Then, still waiting, I got up and stamped about for warmth. The air was not penetrating yet but seeping cold, the moist chill cold that always comes with cloud.

  I had this one hope, that with the coming of darkness, and with a fall in temperature, the cloud would lift. I remembered it would be full moon, a great point to my advantage, for cloud rarely lingers at these times, but tends to break up and dissolve. I welcomed, therefore, the coming of a sharper cold into the atmosphere. The air was perceptibly keener, and looking out towards the south, from which direction the cloud had drifted all the day, I could now see some ten feet ahead. Below me it was still as thick as ever. A wall of impenetrable mist hid the descent. I went on waiting. Above me, always to the south, the distance that I could see increased from a dozen feet to fifteen, from fifteen to twenty. The cloud was cloud no longer, but vapour only, thin, and vanishing; and suddenly the whole contour of the mountain came into view, not the summit as yet, but the great jutting shoulder, leaning south, and beyond it my first glimpse of the sky.

  I looked at my watch again. It was a quarter to six. Night had fallen on Monte Verità.

  Vapour came again, obscuring that clear patch of sky that I had seen, and the
n it drifted, and the sky was there once more. I left my place of shelter where I had been all day. For the second time I was faced with a decision. To climb, or to descend. Above me, the way was clear. There was the shoulder of the mountain, described by Victor; I could even see the ridge along it running to the south, which was the way I should have taken twelve hours before. In two or three hours the moon would have risen and would give me all the light I needed to reach the rock-face of Monte Verità. I looked east, to the descent. The whole of it was hidden in the same wall of cloud. Until the cloud dissolved I should still be in the same position I had been all day, uncertain of direction, helpless in visibility that was never more than three feet.

  I decided to go on, and to climb to the summit of the mountain with my message.

  Now the cloud was beneath me my spirits revived. I studied the rough map drawn by Victor, and set out towards the southern shoulder. I was hungry, and would have given much to have back the sandwiches I had eaten at midday. A roll of bread was all that remained to me. That, and a packet of cigarettes. Cigarettes were not helpful to the wind, but at least they staved off the desire for food.

  Now I could see the twin peaks themselves, clear and stark against the sky. And a new excitement came tome, as I looked up at them, for I knew that when I had rounded the shoulder and had come to the southern face of the mountain, I should have reached my journey's end.

  I went on climbing; and I saw how the ridge narrowed and how the rock steepened, becoming more sheer as the southern slopes opened up to view, and then, over my shoulder, rose the first tip of the moon's great face, out of the misty vapour to the east. The sight of it stirred me to a new sense of isolation. It was as though I walked alone on the earth's rim, the universe below me and above. No one trod this empty discus but myself, and it spun its way through space to ultimate darkness.