Portrait of a Girl (12 page)

The cave was damp and chilly. All sorts of junk and garbage had collected there, but it was too dark to know what anything was. Nika knelt on the ground near the entrance. No sound could be heard inside the cave.

She lost all sense of time. At some point, it would be getting dark outside too.

When the farmer’s wife asked them about Nika at supper, Hans gave Reto a threatening look.

“No idea where she is,” he said and shrugged.

“She’ll be in for it when she gets back,” the farmer said.

“Maybe she ran away,” Hans said.

The next morning, in spite of being afraid, Reto couldn’t hold it in any longer, and he told the farmer’s wife where Nika was.

She sent the boys off. “Bring her back here. And make it quick,” she said. But she kept Reto at home, so he wouldn’t be beaten to a pulp.

They were all silent as they pushed the rock away from the cave entrance and Hans pulled Nika out.

Then Hans said to the others, “She was so scared she made a mess in her pants.”

But nobody laughed. They took Nika, who was shivering with cold, back to the farm.

The farmer’s wife didn’t say anything; just sent Nika off to work with a gesture of her hand. The farmer waited till Sunday. Then he took off his belt and said, “You filthy brat, if you disappear again you’ll get a good hiding.”

From that day on Nika stopped talking.

Walking a Tightrope

Achille Robustelli was at his desk. He felt vaguely uneasy. His attention was entirely focused on seeing to it that the hotel operated smoothly, but he also had a well-developed sixth sense that alerted him when something was not quite right in his surroundings. And there seemed to be several things amiss.

Andrina was apparently upset about the
straniera
’s being transferred from the laundry to the garden. As a chambermaid, she got to see the insides of the hotel guests’ rooms, yet she, herself, was practically invisible. And when she did enter their rooms, it was usually after the illustrious guests had left, leaving her only the thankless task of cleaning up after them. On the other hand, the
straniera
, in Andrina’s eyes, could almost take part in their social life, or at the least observe it. This put Andrina in a bad mood, Robustelli saw.

In addition, he knew, Andrina’s family had problems at home, much more serious ones. Gian was still fighting for his life. Robustelli would gladly have helped the family, for the pretty Andrina’s sake, but the girl’s mother held it against him that he had smoothed the way for Luca to get a job with the railway. Besides, she would have been too proud to accept money from a stranger to pay a doctor—and she didn’t even believe that the doctor could help her son.

Meanwhile, Luca was gone, but that seemed fine to Robustelli. Many young men were leaving the rural areas for the cities to work in factories, or taking jobs with the railroad. It was the march of time. Robustelli saw these developments matter-of-factly. There was no going back, not even in the Engadine, where foreign visitors were now the largest source of income. Not all the locals profited from this, and the difference between the poor and the rich was enormous, even among the natives; the difference in means between the vacationing visitors and the valley residents was nearly incomprehensible. Yet the visitors provided work for the residents, even if they weren’t prepared to share their affluence directly with the poorer locals.

The truth was, Achille had gotten to know his wealthy clientele better than he would have liked. He was a careful observer, and what he saw—although it didn’t turn him into a misanthrope—did quash any idealistic notions he might have had. He was too middle class to get anything out of class-war slogans, but he saw the situation quite clearly, and as a consequence, he never admired rich people just because of their money.

On the other hand, he had thought a lot about what Segantini had told him about the strange young woman. He had also been brooding about Segantini himself. In contrast to those two, who’d been abandoned as children, he had grown up in loving and sheltered circumstances. Not that his mother’s affection had always been problem-free. Sometimes he felt as if he were suffocating under her love. But that same love, especially while his father was still alive, had nurtured him and made him strong enough to see himself with sympathetic and appreciative eyes, and to defend himself against unjust demands or attacks.

Segantini’s story about the girl’s origins made him aware for the first time that not all people grew up with the warm and secure kind of upbringing that seemed so natural to him because he’d had such a home. He wondered about the development of a person who is deprived of love at the beginning of his life. He’d contemplated it, but felt he really couldn’t quite imagine what being abandoned felt like. Yet he could tell that Segantini, in contrast to him, was able to empathize with Nika’s story, probably because he’d had a similar experience early in his life.

It was obvious that Nika and Segantini felt magnetically drawn to each other, because of the unspoken bond that this common experience created. Since the young woman had started working in the garden, Segantini passed by much more often than before, seeking her out. Segantini had fallen in love with Nika; Robustelli had no doubt of that. But he didn’t know where this could lead in a village like Maloja, where everybody knew everyone else, and everything came out into the open sooner or later. Segantini was respected and had a family. And the thought that by helping and encouraging Nika—with the best and noblest intentions—the painter was thereby also causing her new difficulties and possible harm saddened Robustelli. For in the end, any relationship that ensued would be blamed on Nika, not on Segantini.

Isn’t it bad women who lead men astray?

This train of thought made Achille feel uncomfortable. Not because he adhered to a narrow moral standard, and not because he knew the stories of these two people who were so close to him. Rather, watching a situation develop for which he could see no practical solution was hard for him. His ability to find solutions for almost all the problems he encountered was what had made him so successful and content in his profession. But a resolution to what he saw coming between Segantini and the girl eluded his pragmatic mind. The dark, confusing field of human emotion and passion was a strange and mysterious landscape for him. Achille Robustelli liked common sense, clarity, and order, and for that reason, he now switched his focus from musing to finishing his correspondence.

Finding a guide for their mountain hike wasn’t hard. The locals were all familiar with the area, and many of them hired out as guides, easily identifiable by the hemp glacier rope slung over their shoulders. They sat on the benches in front of the big hotels, with gray felt hats on their heads, waiting for customers, smoking, talking among themselves, and all the while unobtrusively studying the tourists. Betsy approached one man and began the negotiations, and proved to be a good businesswoman.

“Let me do it,” she’d told Edward. “I know these people better. Tourism has spoiled most of them. You can read about it in the guide books on Switzerland.”

Preparations for the mountain hike took some time. With his friend looking on in disbelief, Edward acquired an alpenstock, a spiked wooden walking pole nearly as tall as he was, and sporty leggings. He even had his most sturdy pair of shoes resoled with nails to assure safe footing on the mountain. Of course he would wear a white shirt, necktie, and vest, but wasn’t quite sure whether he should also buy a hiking jacket. James flatly vetoed that idea.

Betsy picked her moss-green suit to wear, thinking she would take the jacket off if it got too hot. She liked its practical features, like the elastic band that could be used to hitch up the skirt while climbing. She also bought a walking stick. But she didn’t opt to have nails put on her shoes, for she felt sure on her feet. And for that same reason, she gave their good-looking, tanned guide, Caviezel, a contemptuous look when he recommended that she let herself be carried up to the source of the Inn River in a sedan chair. Still, she did agree with his suggestion that they take a mule along. The creature could carry the picnic in its rather ridiculously decorated saddlebags.

Their handsome mountain guide had said nothing. The lady would perhaps be glad at some point for the mule, he thought. They arranged that on the chosen day they would all meet at the horse-drawn omnibus station at the Hotel Maloja at nine in the morning. From there they would begin their climb.

The morning was clear, and the air smelled of fresh hay. As she was waiting for Edward, Betsy wondered, just for an instant, whether as a widow she should really allow herself to be this adventurous, and if it was all right to have some carefree pleasure—and with a man she hardly knew. Then there was Mathilde, whom she was leaving behind. In general, though, since she didn’t tend to have feelings of guilt, the happy sensation of being alive soon prevailed again and even pushed her worries about her niece to the back of her mind.

Edward was also surprised to find himself in such a good mood as the horses drew his carriage from St. Moritz to Maloja. He felt as if a strong wind had swept away all his caution and misgivings. He was looking forward to the day with Betsy. To his left were the lakes, all in a row like a pearl necklace—after Lake St. Moritz came Lake Champfer, Lake Silvaplana, and Lake Sils.

He gazed out the window as they went through Sils-Maria, a sleepy village off the main road. The place practically belonged to the Germans and wasn’t on the high-society circuit—perhaps the international set found the village too quiet and consequently boring. At most, an amusement-seeking group might be lured to the place for an afternoon excursion—if they wanted to have their tea in the high mountains just as they might have back in the salons of London, Paris, Rome, or Saint Petersburg. In any case, for several years now Nietzsche, who had made Sils familiar in intellectual circles, no longer spent his summers there.

Edward was pleased when moments later the carriage approached Maloja and the grand hotel that dominated the small village came into sight.

The climb took longer than Betsy thought it would. Although the path wasn’t dangerous, it was steep and strenuous. After only a few meters, they left behind the timberline and the shade cast by the last of the stone pines—but, stubborn as she was, Betsy didn’t easily give up. Feeling warm, she took off her suit jacket, silently cursing the long skirt. The material was heavy and impeded her climbing. She envied the men, even though Edward now and then loosened his shirt collar and took off his hat. The guide was smart enough not to mention the mule anymore. Betsy cast a longing look at the saddled animal trotting calmly up the mountain. There was little conversation. Breathing became labored.

Now and then, they stopped to rest, take a sip of tea, marvel at the view. No sooner would they make a halt, than peasant girls appeared out of nowhere, holding out small bouquets of edelweiss and alpine roses, begging for pennies. Edward gave the first girl a coin and gallantly handed the little bunch of flowers to Betsy. Beaming, she pinned them to her belt. She hadn’t been given flowers by a man in a long time, certainly not red roses, even though these were only alpine roses.

“The tourists have shot all the ibex, the mountain goats,” their guide explained, as if to compensate for the fact that the natives were picking all the most beautiful Alpine flowers.

The grass became sparser as they climbed. Ahead of them, silvery green granite glinted in the sunshine, with cliffs oxidized to a reddish brown. Blooms of gentian were visible here and there, glowing with an intense blue that demanded to be admired.

Betsy felt let down when she saw Lej dal Lunghin, the lake into which all the gravel springs from above collected. The water was wonderfully clear and blue, but it reflected nothing except the surrounding bare cliffs. She had liked the Inn River, babbling down the mountain in light, foamy cascades, better than this lonely spring-fed lake. She missed the grass and trees and asked Edward if they could have the picnic farther down the mountain.

The guide was disappointed. Not going up to the Piz Lunghin was like giving up just before reaching your final destination. Hoping to inspire them, he explained to them that one drop of water from the lake could be carried from that point into any one of three seas, depending on the direction in which it flowed downward—into the Black Sea by way of the Inn River, into the Adriatic from Lake Como and the Po River, or northward into the North Sea via the Rhine. This explanation was the high point of his guided tour. He was counting on Edward’s resolute ambition to carry the day.

But Edward felt much closer at that moment to Betsy. He loved the plant world—and here, nature was barren and unfriendly. The surroundings made him think of how insignificant he’d sometimes felt after his disappointment with Emily. Of course, in this powerful landscape, any human being appeared insignificant. But like Betsy, he did not feel at home; he wanted to get down as quickly as possible to a place where you could stretch out in the grass.

Their guide emphasized that even if they returned early, he was to be paid the full amount agreed upon. Then he gave the mule a brusque slap on the back and initiated the climb back down.

Betsy smiled at Edward. They understood each other, even without a lot of words.

Actually, Betsy was a bit surprised at herself. She’d thought herself more adventurous and bold. Down in the valley, looking up, no peak had seemed too high. But now she was quite content to sit down on one of the folding chairs the mule had been carrying and enjoy some cold roast beef with pickles while Edward stretched out on the picnic blanket with his hat pulled down over his face.