Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South (19 page)

Before long the wine came, and the soup, thick with fat sliced mushrooms as well as barley and cream. Sievi arrived for his midday sup, his friend Giohen the bell-saddler with him. They sat with Mariarta, sharing her wine. Sievi leaned back against the fireplace-stone, sighing. “Hot one out there today, and not a moment too soon. Thought I’d go mad if this winter lasted another day.”

Mariarta smiled. The
föhn
had been blowing for almost two weeks; the snow was well melted from the lowest slopes. “I’ll have to go higher now,” she said. “The chamois won’t stay low when the herds start coming to the alp.”

“Higher,
fudi
, higher than you’ve been already?  Up by Buora, if you please,” Sievi said to Giohen.

Giohen sucked in breath. “Not a healthy neighborhood.”

“If people have been dying into the glacier there,” Mariarta said, “they haven’t been coming out again. But I wasn’t looking for ghosts. Just chamois.”

“And your white one,” Sievi said.

Giohen chuckled. “Enough like a ghost, the white one. They say you shoot at it and miss, you’re the one that dies.”

“A good thing I don’t miss, then,” Mariarta said. Neither man challenged her on that. They had been at the shooting contest, when Mariarta had last been to Mustér, and had seen her carry away the prize.

Giohen shrugged. “Still, you might find your chamois: or chamois and dead people, both. You know Menrad, Sievi: the weaver?  His cousin used to hunt way over on Cima della Blanca, and got out onto Gletscher dalla Tuor. This cousin, Callist his name was, he was chasing a chamois, and had to cross this glacier. On the way, he came to one of those snowbridges over a crevasse. You know the kind—step on them slowly, the snow welds together and bears you. He didn’t do it right; down he went into the crevasse. Fell a long way, got knocked out before he hit bottom.”

“Probably that saved him,” Sievi said. “You fall limp, you don’t break as many bones.”

“That’s right. He came to himself  at the bottom, not hurt. But there he is in a deep black dark like the bottom of the devil’s mass-bag, and he can’t see to move. Luckily he has a stump of old candle with him, and flint and steel as usual. So he lights the candle, looks around. He’s been lying on a big stone slab. Except it’s not a slab, this slanted bit: it’s slates, it’s the sides of a roof!  And he sees a tower, with a bell in it. ‘
Zachergiavel,’
” he thinks,  ‘where did this come from?’  So he climbs down, and look at that, it’s a whole church, gates and all. He pushes one of the gates open,  goes inside. All this time everything’s quiet, except for water trickling and dripping, you know that gurgle you hear in the crevasses in warm weather.”

“Not me,” Sievi said, shaking his head. “I don’t know nothing about it, nor want to.”

“So there’s young Callist inside this church,” Giohen said to Mariarta. “He lifts the candle and sees an altar down at the other end. And kneeling on the floor before it are all these people, praying. All dead quiet, but for the water dripping, not a movement anywhere. It gets to Callist, finally, so he goes over to one of the people nearest and puts a hand on his shoulder and whispers,  ‘Friend, what are you doing here?’  And the man slumps over sideways and crumbles away to dust. Young Callist, he’s never been scared in his life nearly, but
this
scares him, as the man next to the one he touched begins to crumble, and the dust starts to rise, and Callist thinks he’ll breathe it and crumble too—  He ran out of there and started climbing out of that crevasse, didn’t know what he was doing even, he was so scared. Finally he got out—hours, it took, but he found himself up on the glacier at sunset, and it was before noon when he went down.

“Midnight it was before he got home. His friends at the Pardatsch hut were waiting for him. He told them what happened, and they decided they’d go back to the glacier in the morning with ropes and ladders, and find this church. But they could never find the right crevasse with the church again.” Giohen shook his head and drank. “Still down there somewhere.”

“You’ll probably stumble on it sooner or later,” Sievi said to Mariarta, amused.

Mariarta finished the last of her wine. “Not if I can help it.”

“You’ll get stuck halfway down the crevasse, the way you’re eating,” Giohen said admiringly, as Turté came along with Mariarta’s chicken and set it  on the table.

Sievi reached out and pinched Turté’s bottom; she glared at him. “That’s what it’s there for,” Sievi said jovially.  “You’d be offended if I didn’t. Just go get some more of that wine, Turté.”

As Turté went off, Mariarta raised her eyebrows and gave her a commisserating look. Turté smiled. Giohen caught it, snickered.

“They’re good girls,” Mariarta said, taking a leg off her chicken.

Sievi laughed. “They will be once they’re safely married.”

“Oh, come on, Sievi.”

“Taking a fancy to them, are you?  They’ve taken enough of one to you. Young Turté there, even that proud-looking Frona—”

“They’re good girls,” Mariarta said, more softly.

“They wouldn’t be if they were let run loose,” Sievi said, “and it’s only Sep watching them night and day that keeps them out of trouble. Why, some of the men around here would...” He shook his head. “Never mind, you’re from the country after all, no use mentioning other people’s bad habits.”

“That the men would jump them the first chance they got, that’s the girls’ fault, is it?” Mariarta said.  

Sievi laughed harder. “It’s Turté for sure. You may have a problem, youngster. She has another lad after her—”

The wind gusted outside. The front door of the common room blew open with a slam: a figure stood in it, silhouetted in the sunlight from outside. “Speak of il Giavel,” said Giohen, “there’s young Flisch himself. I wonder—”

He broke off at the sound of a man’s scream. The dark shape in the doorway collapsed.

People ran to the man, shouting after a moment for cold wine and hot spirits, for blankets and hot stones for his head and feet. Along with Sievi and Giohen, Mariarta went to see what was happening. The closer bystanders had got the man onto a table. Turté was stroking his head with one hand, holding his hand with the other, moaning, “Flisch!  Flisch!” The young man, stocky and strong as he looked, was pale as a corpse ready to be buried. But sweat stood out on him, and he twisted and moaned softly. His eyes were squeezed shut.

Mariarta leaned over him, put a hand to his head. “He’s burning up. Turté, stop it and help me get his coat off. Where’s he been?”

“Balzer says they saw him coming from the pass,” said a big deep voice behind them. That was Ramun, the innkeeper.

“He went there two days ago,” Turté said, “he said he heard the chamois were good there—”

Mariarta shook her head. “But what’s come to him?” Inside, though, she had an idea. Poor Flisch looked a lot like the first boy who had met the Bull, after the shock wore off—

“This is no good,” Mariarta said. “He ought to be somewhere quiet. Ramun, put him in my room, and send for someone from the Abbey—”

“Bab Stoffel, he’s the leech. Duf, go bring him. Sievi, Lucas, give me a hand!”

They got Flisch up to Mariarta’s small room, onto the narrow straw-mattressed bed. Flisch’s eyes never opened. When the others went away, all but Turté, Mariarta shut the door and sat beside him. “Flisch—”

He moaned, his head turning from side to side on the pillow.

“Something’s bewitched him,” Turté said, the tears running down her face. “What if he—”

Another moan. The handsome dark face was all twisted like a child’s when it’s trying not to cry. “Turté,” Mariarta said, “open that shutter, would you?  It’s close in here.”

Turté swung the shutter open. A warm breeze flowed in, a momentarily gentle breath of
föhn
. “Flisch!” Mariarta said. “What happened?  You have to tell us!”

A louder moan. This time, as she leaned close, Mariarta caught a breath of windborne thought:
...put that there...why... Cold. I’ll go in... No!  What...
no!

Mariarta shook her head. “Turté, he doesn’t know me. Ask him what happened.”

“Flisch—Flisch, it’s Turté, dear one, what happened, what happened to you?”

...just a little fire...warmer...what?
  Mariarta’s eyes flew open as she felt what Flisch had at some point in the past two nights (for the thought was all dark): a huge crashing blow, followed by another, and another, not to the body, but inside it, the soul struck by something that knocked as if at a door.

“Flisch!  Flisch!” Turté sobbed. The wind brought Mariarta the sound of something creaking, wood in a high wind, perhaps?  a building?—and more crashes—

“No,” Flisch said, aloud this time. The knocking got louder—no, it was really someone at the door this time. Turté opened it. A slight man in a rusty black cassock came in and knelt beside Mariarta, taking Flisch’s hand to feel the pulse.

“Bab Stoffel?” Mariarta said. The monk nodded, brought his hand away from Flisch’s head wet with sweat.

“This is your room?” Bab Stoffel said. “Bless you then, son. He spoke just now, I thought—”

“Just the one word.”

The monk touched one of Flisch’s eyelids. It twitched, but stayed shut. “Flisch!” he said. “In God’s name, tell us what’s come to you!”

No,
  the wind said in Mariarta’s ear. But Mariarta thought some other question was being answered.
No, I won’t...I won’t...
And Flisch screamed:
“I won’t!  I won’t open it!  I won’t open it!”

Mariarta and Turté and the Bab stared at one another. The Bab stood up. “I think we should let him rest, while we try to find out more. —You come too, Turté. No harm will come to him here. Come along and go do your work, for the meantime.”

Mariarta shut the door and followed the Bab downstairs into the common room. Ramun was waiting there for them: he handed the Bab a cup of barley-water, which Bab Stoffel gladly drank. “Have you found anyone else who saw him come  from the pass?” he said to Ramun.

“No. Just Michel at the upper farm: says he was driving the cows out and saw Flisch just walk by, not looking right or left.”

“
Striegn,
” someone whispered.

“I don’t know,” Bab Stoffel said. “I have to go back to the Abbey and bring some medicines good against witchery. If they don’t work—then this may be exhaustion compounded by fear of something that happened. If the fear was of something natural, then it will fade, and Flisch will recover. But if he saw something unnatural, a demon, a ghost—”

“Then the demon has to be driven away, or the ghost laid?” Ramun said.

“If it can be. His fear ties him to it. The tie must be broken. Otherwise....”

The sound of weeping came from behind them. Bab Stoffel turned to Turté. “Don’t give up yet!  We still have the medicines to try: and there are the holy Sacraments as well. Cry less and pray more, Turté, and you’ll do Flisch more good. Ramun, I’ll be back.”

•

Bab Stoffel returned with a leather bag, and went to Mariarta’s room. When he came to the common room at last, it was mid-afternoon. He went to sit by the fire, where half the patrons of the inn were gathered.

“Nothing,” he said to them. “He is not changed.”

Turté had followed him to the fire: her face puckered again, but she held the tears back hard. Mariarta’s heart clenched for her. “He cries out occasionally,” Bab Stoffel said, “but the words make no sense. I fear there’s nothing to do but keep him warm and quiet.”

The men around the fire muttered. Mariarta couldn’t bear it any more. She went to Turté. “Look here—”

Sievi laughed. “Not wasting any time, are you?”

Mariarta turned, frowning. “Sievi,” she said, “you are an honest tradesman, but in other matters you have a mind like the bottom of one of your vats. I am going up the Pass.”

A shocked silence fell. “Mattiu, you’re a fool,” Ramun said. “You may be good with a bow, but—”

“I can bring back some news of what happened to Flisch,” Mariarta said. She took her coat off the back of the bench. “Besides, other people come down that pass. Will you have
them
fall foul of whatever’s happened to Flisch?  Enough of that happens, sooner or later no one will use the pass any more. Then where are your livelihoods?”

Bab Stoffel said, “If you will do something so dangerous, Mattiu, will you at least take a blessing with you?”

Mariarta nodded, shrugged into her coat, and knelt, while everything got quiet. Bab Stoffel traced the Cross over her, and after murmuring under his breath in Latin, said, “Go well, and come back to us safely.”

“That’s as God wills,” Mariarta said. “As for me, I’ll do what I can. Ramun, maybe your kitchen can give me some bread and meat—”

“Come on,” Turté said, and led Mariarta out.

•

The road up the Lucomagno from Mustér is gentle at first, a series of zigzags that roughly follow the course of the Rein da Medel. As the road bends, the traveller can look back from this spot or that to see Mustér framed as if in a doorway between the hills that rise to either side of the Rein gorge: gentle sloping hills all greenclad, with pines at their tops. Then the road swings eastward, up the Acla slope, to Curaglia village at the mouth of the Masauna side-valley. Mariarta asked at the village inn there, barely more than someone’s front room, whether they had seen a man walk through town that day, a chamois hunter, possibly talking to himself?  The house-husband, a gaunt unsmiling man, shook his head at Mariarta and turned away, so that she knew he
had
seen such a man, and was frightened by him.