Winter's End (17 page)

“I’m afraid I don’t speak your language,” Helen apologized. “I . . .”

He brought a thin arm out from under the blanket and pointed his shaking hand at her. “Bjoy? Gjirl?”

“Oh, I see!” said Helen, laughing. “A girl! I’m a girl!”

With her short hair, her square face, and wearing Pastor’s jacket, she could indeed have passed for a boy. As soon as the old man knew that she was a girl, he seemed better disposed to her. He signaled to her to draw up the other chair and sit down. But that was as far as communication went, and they sat there face-to-face, now and then exchanging rather awkward smiles. Helen was just wondering how the evening was going to turn out when the door opened and a little old woman wearing a head scarf came in. She closed the door after her, quickly hung up her coat on a nail, and stopped dead in the middle of the room when she saw the visitor,
who had risen from her chair. However, after the old man had said something in his own language, she walked toward Helen at once with her arms spread wide, “Hugo’s fiancée!”

“No, I’m not Hugo’s fiancée,” replied Helen, glad to find someone who could understand her at last. “I got lost in the mountains, and —”

“Oh, I see,” said the old lady, obviously disappointed, but she hugged Helen warmly all the same. Her cold cheeks felt soft as silk. “And you’re lost?”

“That’s right. I’ve come from the refuge up in the mountains. You know it?”

“Yes, yes, I know the refuge.”

“My friend’s up there, he’s injured — badly injured — do you understand? It’s his leg. I came down to find help, he needs medical attention.”

As she told her story, the old man was trying to talk to his wife too, and the poor woman didn’t know which of them to listen to.

“He thinks you’re Hugo’s fiancée,” she told Helen at last. “Stubborn as a mule, he is! Just tell him Hugo’s well and then he’ll leave us in peace!”

“Hugo’s well,” Helen told the old man, smiling and articulating clearly. “He’s very well.”

“Ah,” he said, satisfied, and then he was quiet.

The old lady gave Helen a conspiratorial wink, as if to say,
Now we can talk sensibly.

“As I was telling you, my friend’s in the mountain refuge,” Helen tried again. “He’s badly injured. I need to find a sleigh to go and get him down, or a doctor to go up and treat him.”

“Oh, is there a doctor in the mountain refuge?”

“No! No, there isn’t a doctor in the refuge! My friend’s all alone up there. He’s injured. Do you know a doctor?”

“Well, my son . . .”

“Your son’s a doctor?”

The expression on the old woman’s face suddenly changed. She looked at Helen in astonishment. “My son’s a doctor, is he? My youngest son?”

Oh, my God,
Helen thought,
what on earth have I landed in?
But she persisted all the same. “Yes, you just told me your son is a doctor. Didn’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. . . . Would you like a little soup?”

For the first time, Helen noticed a cast-iron pan heating up on the stove. Steam was escaping from under the lid. Why not take advantage of the offer? Night had fallen now, and she would have to eat and sleep somewhere.

The little old lady lit an oil lamp hanging from a beam in the ceiling and took a large bowl out of the table drawer. “I’ll see to my man first. He shakes too much to feed himself. He’s not quite right in the head, you know. He hasn’t spoken anything but his mother tongue for some time. Oh, it’s so sad, my dear. You should have seen him when he was young!”

Helen watched her feeding her husband the soup, standing close to him. It was touching to see her patience and the delicacy of her gestures. Then she and Helen sat down at the table for their own
meal. Sadly, the soup wasn’t as good as Helen had hoped. She could hardly swallow the lukewarm pieces of potato and turnip floating in a broth that tasted of nothing much.

“Is there anyone else living near here?” she asked. “Other houses?”

“My son . . .” said the old woman.

“Your son the doctor?”

At this moment the old man in his chair repeated a question, several times. Helen caught the name Hugo.

“What’s he saying?”

“He wants to know how many children you and Hugo have. He’s rambling — wait a minute.”

She answered volubly in her husband’s language, and then stifled her laughter in the dishtowel she was still holding.

“What did you say?”

“I said you had seven, all boys, and two of them twins into the bargain! He’ll leave us in peace while he thinks that over!”

Sure enough, the old man nodded and immersed himself in his own thoughts again. Helen repressed her desire to laugh. This little old lady, so lively and so confused at the same time, was full of surprises.

“You were telling me your son lives here. Your son the doctor.”

“Oh, the doctor? Does he live here too?”

“Yes, your son . . .”

“Ah yes, my son. He’ll be coming tomorrow morning. Would you like a glass of wine, my dear?”

“What time will your son be here? Because my friend is injured up there in the mountain refuge.”

“Yes, yes, didn’t you say it’s his leg?”

“That’s right. His leg is injured. Will your son the doctor be able to help him? Do you think he’ll be able to treat him?”

The old woman trotted over to the door at the back of the room and opened it. A flight of steps led up to the second floor and another went down to the cellar. She picked up a half-full bottle of wine from the first step and took two glasses out of the cupboard.

“I don’t drink wine,” said Helen. Her impatience was getting her down. “I’d rather have —”

“Ah, you should have seen him when he was young!” the old lady interrupted her, filling the glasses. “Sixteen and a half, I was, working in the café. He was a woodcutter. We happened to pass them in a clearing, my friend Franciska and me. A dozen foreign workmen. They’d stopped for their break; they were bare-chested, playing boules with round stones. There was a lot of talking and laughter. He was better-looking than the others. Much better-looking. He had his stone in one hand and a piece of cheese in the other. His shoulders were shining with sweat. ‘Ooh,’ said Franciska, ‘did you see that one? Such a handsome man!’ What a laugh we had! And I made sure I passed that way alone over the next few days. One day he came up to me and we told each other our names. He was even
better-looking up close than from a distance. And another time we agreed in sign language to meet that evening.”

Helen turned her head and looked at the old man’s liver-spotted skull, wrinkled neck, and thin shoulders as he dozed by the stove. In spite of her own impatience, she felt touched.

“And . . . so you got together?”

“Yes, that we did. Try keeping a boy and a girl apart! I waited for him behind my father’s workshop. I’d prettied myself up on the sly. Lipstick and everything. When I saw him come around the corner of the street and walk toward me I was bowled right over! He was wearing a white shirt, with an open collar showing his chest, and as for the crease in his trousers — oh, what a crease! Ironed in! And there he was, sleeping in a hut in the middle of the woods, but it didn’t keep him from looking elegant. Eighteen years old, he was, and there was I, sixteen and a half . . .”

“What a memory you have!”

“No, no, I forget everything these days, but not that. Come along, let’s drink to our health, my dear.”

They clinked glasses. The wine was rough as it went down Helen’s throat, and she found it hard to swallow the first mouthful.

“So then you had children?” she went on, a little ashamed of bringing the conversation back to what really interested her.

“Children, oh yes. We had . . . we had four. No, five.”

“And now the youngest is a doctor? Is that right?”

“I don’t remember . . . Oh, you must forgive me. I’m like him; I forget so much these days. Come along, time for bed. We sleep down here, in the little room next door, and you can have the room upstairs. Just take a candle from the drawer before you go up, dear.”

She went over to her husband, whispered something to him, and helped him to his feet. They both crossed the room, moving very slowly. Helen watched them pass her as she drank her wine. It was already going to her head. When the door of the little room next door had closed behind the two old people, she rose and went to sit by the stove to absorb a little warmth. It was sure to be cold upstairs. She was about to go up when the old lady came back in her nightdress, with a nightcap on her head.

“Look, dear.”

The photo in the wooden frame showed the head and shoulders of a young man wearing a tie. He had a black, neatly shaped beard, and he wore a peculiar flat cap on his head as he looked confidently into the lens.

“My son! Read what it says on the back.”

On the cardboard at the back of the frame someone had carefully written a date — it was thirty years ago — with the new graduate’s first name, Josef, and his qualification: doctor of medicine.

“Your son! That’s your son who’s coming tomorrow?”

“Yes, he comes every Tuesday. Good night, dear.”

Helen swiftly counted days. She and Milos had run away from school on Friday evening; two nights had passed since then. Maybe the old lady was right.

Although she was so tired, she found it hard to get to sleep. The bedroom was cold, the bed sagged, and the enormous eiderdown slipped to the floor at the slightest movement. She was haunted by her mental picture of Milos losing blood in the mountain refuge. She didn’t drop off until the small hours of the morning, lulled by the giant pig’s deep grunting. It shook the windowpanes.

The doctor arrived at ten in the morning in a muddy, high-built car, which was backfiring noisily. He was a dark-eyed man of about fifty. With his gray hair, bald patch, and shaggy beard, he didn’t look much like the photograph of his younger self. Helen ran over the meadow toward him before he even had time to get out of the car. It was a relief to talk to someone who could understand her!

“We’ll go on around the mountain in the car,” he said. “Then two hours on foot from a place I know will get us to the refuge.”

“You mean we’ll be up there by this evening?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Do you have your medical bag with you? Will you be able to treat him?”

“I have everything I’ll need. I’ll just leave my parents their provisions and then we’ll start.”

Helen could have kissed him. Her good-byes to the two old people were quickly said.

“Come back and see us soon!” said the old lady. “We enjoy a visit.”

“Gjirl!” the old man informed his son, pointing to Helen. And he embarked on a long and incomprehensible torrent of words in which the name of Hugo came up several times.

“What’s he saying?” asked Helen.

“He says you’re very young to have had seven sons with Hugo. I wonder how on earth he took such an idea into his head.”

“Who is this Hugo, anyway?” asked Helen, smiling.

“My son,” said the doctor. “He’ll be twelve in November.”

Then he put a toboggan into the trunk of the car and turned the starting handle. The pig gave them one last grunt by way of good-bye and they set off, with the old lady waving her dirty dishtowel from the doorstep.

The road went uphill along a gentle slope, but there were so many rocks that it was a bumpy ride. The car jolted along, and Helen had to hold on to the door handle beside her seat to keep from being thrown up into the air. Talking through the roar of the engine wasn’t easy.

“What were you doing up at the refuge at this time of year?” shouted the doctor.

“A walking trip!” Helen replied, surprised to find how much easier it was to shout a lie than tell one in a normal voice.

“The snow took you by surprise?”

“Yes.”

“I see. I’m Josef — what’s your name?”

“Helen.”

They said no more for a few more miles, and then the doctor jerked his head in the direction of a bag on the backseat. “There’s something to eat in there. Bread and dark chocolate, I think. Help yourself.”

Chocolate! Helen made an effort not to fall on it too desperately. She reached behind her for the bag and put it calmly on her knees.

“How exactly did your friend injure himself, by the way?”

“Cutting a piece of wood with his knife,” said Helen, a bar of chocolate in her hand. “Would you like some?”

“Yes please, I’ll have a small square,” said the doctor, laughing. “My little weakness!”

As she gave him the chocolate, a jolt even stronger than the others made them both rise briefly into the air and they both burst out laughing.

Helen considered telling him the truth as she ate the chocolate. Once they got up there, he’d soon realize she’d been lying. He’d see how deep the cut was, and the blood all over the place. And if the snow had melted, he’d even see the bodies. He was a doctor; he’d treat Milos, but then what? Would he give them away?

She realized that it was a risky business to take this unknown man up to the scene of the violence. But how else could she help Milos?

They drove on for a little longer, exchanging a few commonplaces about the landscape and the poor state of the road. The doctor, concentrating on his driving, asked no more questions. Dark ravines lay on their right now. On their left, the summit of the mountain disappeared into the mists. A large bird of prey clipped the windshield, flapping its wings, and made them jump.

“Is it much farther?” asked Helen.

“No, we’re nearly there,” the doctor told her. And less than a quarter of an hour later he stopped the car by the roadside.

A snow-covered path led straight toward the mountains. They put on their snowshoes and started along it. The doctor took large strides, pulling the toboggan that was to bring Milos down again. Sometimes he stopped to wait for Helen, who was carrying his medical bag and had some difficulty in keeping up. They walked for over two hours before they came to a small spruce wood.

“The refuge is on the other side,” said the doctor. “You’ll recognize the place.”

Sure enough, as soon as they had gone through the wood, she could make out the gray shape of the hut about two hundred yards above them. Her heart beat faster.
I’m coming, Milos. Don’t worry. I’m bringing a doctor. Everything will be all right. . . .