The Dead Mountaineer's Inn (11 page)

The music was still playing but the hall was already empty, except for Du Barnstoker, who was sitting at the card table with his back to me, pensively performing card tricks with a pair of decks. With smooth movements of his slim white fingers, he plucked cards out of the air, made them vanish from his outstretched palms, blew a fan of shimmering cards from one hand into the other, scattered the entire deck into the air in front of him and then sent it to oblivion. He hadn't noticed me, and I wasn't going to distract him. I took a bottle from the bar and tiptoed back into the billiard room.

When the bottle was a little less than halfway gone, I took a shot so strong that it caused two balls to jump off the table at the same time, and tore the billiard cloth. Simone was moved to admiration, but I decided I'd had enough.

“That's it,” I said, setting down my cue. “I need some fresh air.”

I crossed the now-empty dining room, made my way
down the hall and went out onto the porch. For some reason I felt sad that the party had come to an end without anything interesting happening; that I had wasted my chance with Mrs. Moses and, if memory served, rattled off some nonsense to the child of Du Barnstoker's late brother; that the moon was bright, tiny and icy-looking; and that around me for many miles there was nothing but snow and rocks. I had a talk with the St. Bernard, who was making his nightly rounds; he agreed that the night was too quiet and empty, and that solitude, despite its numerous benefits, was really a lousy thing. Still, he refused outright to break the valley's silence and join me in a howl, or even just a good bark. In response to my request he just shook his head, walked away with a dissatisfied look and lay down by the porch.

I walked back and forth on the clear path in front of the inn, gazing up at the façade, which was bathed in blue moonlight. The kitchen window was glowing yellow, Mrs. Moses's bedroom window was rose-colored, there was another light coming from Du Barnstoker's room, and behind the curtains in the dining room; all the other windows were dark, including Olaf's, which was wide open, as it had been that morning. On the roof, Hinkus the martyr protruded, bundled to his ears in a fur coat, looking as lonely as Lel and I but even less happy under his burden of illness and fear.

“Hinkus!” I called quietly, but he didn't move. Maybe he was sleeping, or maybe he didn't hear me through the heavy earmuffs and turned-up collar.

I was freezing, but I felt cheered up by the fact that it was now time to avail myself of a fine old hotel tradition, and drink some hot port.

“Come on, Lel,” I said, and we went back into the hall. There we met the owner, and I let him in on my plan. We were in total sympathy with one another.

“Now is the perfect time for sitting in front of the fireplace,” he said. “Go on ahead, Peter, please—I'll get things ready.”

I accepted his invitation and, after grabbing a place by the fire, began warming my freezing hands. I listened as the owner walked down the hall, muttered something to Kaisa and then kept walking, flipping switches as he went. His footsteps grew quieter, and the music in the dining room shut off. He plodded heavily down the stairs and then walked back up the hall again, lecturing Lel softly. “No, Lel, don't pester me,” he said sternly. “You've disgraced yourself again—in the house this time. Mr. Olaf complained to me. What a shame. Where have you ever seen a respectable dog do something like that?”

So, the Viking had suffered a second embarrassment, I thought with no small amount of relish. My gloating increased as I recalled how avidly Olaf had danced in the dining room with the kid. When Lel approached me with his head bowed in shame, and nudged his cold nose into my fist, I patted him on the neck and whispered, “Good boy—just what he deserves!”

At that exact moment the floor shuddered gently beneath my feet, the windows rattled piteously, and I heard a distant and powerful rumble. Lel lifted his head and pricked his ears up. I glanced automatically at my watch: two minutes after ten. I waited, my whole body tense. The rumble did not repeat itself. Somewhere above me a door slammed heavily, rattling the kitchen pots. Kaisa said, “Oh my god!” loudly. I stood up, but by then I could hear the sound of footsteps, and the owner came in carrying two cups of hot liquor.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Yes. What was it?”

“An avalanche in the mountains. Not too far away either … Excuse me for a second, Peter.”

He put the glasses down on the mantelpiece and left the
room. I picked up my glass and sat back down in my chair. I felt completely calm. Landslides didn't scare me, and the port, which had been infused with lemon and cinnamon, was beyond praise. Excellent, I thought, settling in.

“Excellent!” I said out loud. “Right, Lel?”

Lel didn't object, even though he hadn't tried any of the hot port.

The owner came back. He picked up his glass, sat down beside me and stared at the embers for some time.

“It doesn't look good, Peter,” he said finally, with heavy solemnity. “We're cut off from the outside.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“How long does your vacation last, Peter?” he continued in the same dull voice.

“Until around the twentieth. Why do you ask?”

“The twentieth,” he said slowly. “More than two weeks … In that case, it looks like you should be able to get back on time.”

I put my glass on my knee and repaid his mystifications with a sarcastic look.

“Out with it, Alek,” I said. “Don't pull any punches. What's happened? Has HE finally returned?”

The owner flashed a placating grin.

“No. Not yet, thank god. I have to tell you—just between us—that HE was quite a moody and grumpy type of person, and if HE did ever return … However, let's not speak poorly about the dead. Let's talk about the living. I'm glad you have two weeks left, because it may take them that long to dig us out.”

Now I understood.

“The road's blocked?”

“Yes. Just now I tried to get in touch with Mur. The telephone isn't working. That can mean only one thing, the same
thing that it's meant several times in the past ten years: an avalanche has blocked Bottleneck. You passed that way yourself. It's the only way into my valley.”

He took a sip from his glass.

“I realized what had happened immediately,” he continued. “The rumble came from the north. Now all we can do is wait. Wait for them to remember us and organize a work crew …”

“We've got more than enough water,” I said thoughtfully. “But what's to prevent us from descending into cannibalism?”

“There'll be no need for that,” the manager said complacently. “Only if you want to spice up the menu. Except I'm warning you up front: I won't give you Kaisa. You can gnaw on Du Barnstoker. He won seventy crowns off me tonight, the old cheat.”

“How about fuel?” I asked.

“There's always my perpetual motion machines.”

“Hmm …” I said. “Are they made of wood?”

The owner gave me a reproachful look. Then he said:

“Why haven't you asked about the booze, Peter?”

“What about the booze?”

“When it comes to booze, we're doing very well,” the owner said proudly. “A hundred and twenty bottles—and that's only the house liqueur.”

We stared at the embers for a while, sipping quietly at our drinks. I was as happy as I'd ever been. I thought about what might come of this, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

Suddenly the owner spoke.

“The only thing that bothers me, Peter, if we can be serious for a moment, is that I think I've lost a good client.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked. “So far as I can see you have eight tasty flies in your web, and now they have no
chance of escaping for another two weeks. Now that's what I call good publicity! When it's all over, they'll talk about how they were buried alive and almost had to eat one another …”

“That's true,” the manager said with satisfaction. “The thought had occurred to me already. But there would be even more flies if Hinkus's friends managed to make it here …”

“Hinkus's friends?” I said, surprised. “He told you that he had friends who were coming?”

“Not told me, exactly … He called the telegraph office in Mur and dictated a telegram.”

“And …?”

The manager raised a finger and recited solemnly.

“ ‘IN MUR, AT THE DEAD MOUNTAINEER'S INN. WAITING. HURRY.' Something like that.”

“I would never have guessed,” I muttered. “Hinkus has friends who are willing to share his solitude. But then again, why not?
Pourquoi pas
, as they say …”

By midnight the owner and I had a pitcher of hot port already under our belts, and had moved on from discussing how best to notify the guests that they had been buried alive to more universal questions—for example, Is mankind doomed to extinction (Yes, doomed, but we won't be around when it happens); Is there a force in nature that the human mind cannot fathom (Yes, there is, but we'll never know anything about it); Is Lel the St. Bernard capable of sentient thought (Yes, he is, though convincing scientific dolts of this is impossible); Is the universe in danger of succumbing to so-called “heat death” (No, it is not in danger, due to the existence of perpetual motion machines of both the first and second type in the owner's barn); Was Brun a boy or a girl (Here I was unable to come to any conclusion, but the owner put forward the odd idea that Brun was a zombie, that is, a sexless creature animated by magic) …

Kaisa was cleaning in the dining room; she had washed all the dishes and presented herself to ask if she could go to bed. We let her go. Watching her as she went, the owner complained about his loneliness, and the fact that his wife had left him. That is to say, she hadn't left him … it wasn't as simple as that … but, in a word, to speak plainly, he was currently wifeless. I told him not to marry Kaisa, first because it would
hurt business, and second because Kaisa loved men too much to make a good wife. The owner agreed that this was true, he had thought about it a long time himself and come to the same conclusions. Still, he said, who am I supposed to marry now that we're going to be buried in this valley for the rest of our lives? I was unable to give him any advice on that score; all I did was admit that I was on my second marriage, and therefore had probably already taken more than my share. It was a terrible way to think about it, and although the owner forgave me immediately, I still felt like an egoist and bad Samaritan. In order to repay him in some way for all my awful attributes, I decided to school him in the technicalities of forging lottery tickets. He listened attentively, but this didn't seem like enough to me, so I demanded that he write it down. “You'll forget!” I repeated despairingly. “You'll sober up and forget all about it …” The owner grew terribly afraid that he really would forget it, and demanded that we give it a practice run. I think it was around then that Lel the St. Bernard suddenly jumped up and gave a deep bark. The owner stared at him.

“I don't understand!” he said sternly.

Lel barked twice and went out into the lobby.

“Aha,” said the owner, standing up. “Someone's arrived.”

We followed Lel. We were flush with the spirit of hospitality. Lel was standing by the front door. Strange scratching and whining sounds were coming from the other side. I grabbed the owner's hand.

“Bear!” I whispered. “A grizzly. Do you have a gun? Quickly!”

“That's no bear, I'm afraid,” the owner said in his dull voice. “It's HIM. At last. We need to unlock it.”

“We do not!” I said.

“We do. He paid for two full weeks, but only stayed one. We have no right. They'll take away my license.”

The sound of scraping and whimpering came from behind the door. Lel was acting strangely: he stood with his side to the door, staring at it with an inquisitive expression, and giving the air a big sniff from time to time. In my opinion, this was exactly how a dog would behave when confronted with a ghost for the first time. While I was searching agonizingly for a good reason not to open the door, the owner came to his own decision. He bravely reached out and slid the bolt open.

The door opened, and a snow-caked figure slowly collapsed at our feet. All three of us rushed towards him, dragging him into the lobby and turning him onto his back. The snow-caked man groaned and stretched out. His eyes were closed and his long nose was white.

Without losing a second, the owner burst into a frenzy of activity. He woke up Kaisa, ordered her to heat up some water, poured a glass of hot port down the stranger's throat, rubbed his face with a wool mitten, and then announced that we needed to get him in the shower. “Peter—armpits,” he ordered. “I'll get the legs.” I carried out his order, experiencing no small shock when I saw that the stranger was missing an arm, his right one, up to the shoulder. We dragged the poor guy into the shower and lay him on the bench, at which point Kaisa ran in wearing only a nightgown, and the owner told me that he would take it from here.

I went back to the fireplace and finished my port. My head was totally clear; I was capable of analyzing and comparing events with unusual speed. The stranger's clothes were out of season. A short jacket, flared pants and dress shoes. Only someone who was traveling by car would wear something like that to a place like this. Which means that something had happened to the car, and he'd been forced to make his way to the inn on foot. No doubt over quite a distance, considering how exhausted and cold he looked. Then I understood. It
was obvious: he'd been coming here by car, and got hit by the avalanche at Bottleneck. So this was Hinkus's friend! We had to wake up Hinkus … Maybe there were still people back at the car, who'd been wounded and couldn't move. Maybe they were already dead … Hinkus had to know …