I must admit that when I saw the thing, I didn’t like it much myself. We stood at the bottom of it and looked up to the rifugio more than a thousand feet above us. Its gabled roofs and wooden belvedere were just visible at the top of the sleigh track cut through the pinewoods. It was perched high on the shoulder of Monte Cristallo, the great bastions of the mountain towering above it. It was about as remote from civilisation as an eagle’s nest.
Our chauffeur got out of the car and shouted, ‘Emilio!’ A little man, wearing British battle-dress and the most enormous pair of snow boots, emerged from the concrete building that housed the cable plant. The boots dated back to the German occupation when there had been a flak position in the Tre Croci pass.
The snows had only just started down in Cortina, for it was early in the season yet. But up here it was already getting thick and the previous night’s fall lay like a virgin blanket over everything.
We transferred our gear to the sleigh, putting our skis in the ski rack at the back. The black case of my typewriter and Joe Wesson’s camera equipment seemed out of place. We climbed in. The man with the snow boots got up behind the steering wheel. He pulled over a switch and the cable tightened in front of us so that here and there it jerked clear of the snow. A soft crunching sound and we were gliding forward along the snow track. Almost immediately we were on the slope and the sleigh tilted upwards in an alarming fashion so that I found myself lying on my back rather than sitting on the seat. It was a peculiar and rather frightening sensation. We lost sight of the rifugio. We were looking up a long white avenue between the dark pines. It rose straight into the blue sky and was steep as the side of a house.
I looked back. Already the square Tre Croci Hotel was no bigger than a large black box resting on the white blanket of the pass. The road to Austria snaked through the pass like a dirty brown ribbon. The sun shone, but there was no sign of that ‘sunny snow paradise’ referred to in the tourist brochures. It was a lost and barren world of snow and black forest.
Ahead of us, the cable was strung taut like the string of a violin. There was no sound save the soft slither of the sleigh runs on the snow. The air was still between the dark pines. We were climbing at an angle of about sixty degrees. Joe leaned across me and spoke to the driver in English. ‘Do these cables ever break on these things?’ he asked.
The driver seemed to understand. He smiled and shook his head. ‘Non, non, signore. They have not never break. But the funivia—’ that was the overhead cableway down at Cortina, and he let go the wheel for an instant and spread his hands in an expressive gesture. ‘Once he break. Pocol funivia. Molto pericoloso.’ And he grinned.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘The cable, he gone. But the cable which draw him hold, so they fall twenty metres and do not touch earth. The passengers, they were much frightened.’
‘Suppose this cable goes?’ I enquired.
‘It no go. It is a cable of the tedesci.’ Then he crinkled the corners of his blue eyes. ‘But if he do go—you see, signori, there is nothing that will not stop you.’ And he pointed with a grin down the frightful track behind us.
‘Thanks very much,’ I said. And I was as glad as I have ever been to get out of that perilous vehicle at the rifugio.
It was large for a rifugio. Most of them only cater for the day visitor and have no sleeping accommodation. Col da Varda, however, had been designed to cater for those who come to the Dolomites for the ski-ing alone and who do not want to dance till the early hours.
It was timber-built of pines from the woods and had been constructed two years ago by the one-time owner of the Excelsiore. It was built over and around the concrete housing of the cable machinery for the slittovia. With Teutonic thoroughness the Germans had placed the electrically operated haulage plant at the top of the sleigh track. The hut itself was a long building with great feet of pine piles driven deep into the snow. Its main feature was a large belvedere or platform, protected by glass like the bridge of a ship. It looked south and west across Tre Croci and down the pass to Cortina. The view was a magnificent study in black and white in the sunshine. And though it was still early and we were nearly 8,000 feet up, it was already warm enough to sit outside.
Back from the belvedere was a large eating room. It was lined with resined match-boarding and had big windows and long pine tables with forms on each side. In one corner was a typically Italian bar with a chromium-plated coffee geyser and, behind it, a shining array of bottles of all shapes in the midst of which swung the brass pendulum of a cuckoo clock. Between the bar and the door leading to the kitchen and the rest of the hut was a big tiled stove of Austrian pattern and there was an old upright piano in the far corner.
We went through the door towards the kitchen. Our first sight of Aldo was a head popped through the serving hatch in the kitchen door. It was a hairless head, sparsely garnished with a few grey tufts and both scalp and face gleamed as though freshly polished. The eyes had a dumb look and the mouth smiled vacantly as though apologising for the rest of it. The man was an ape. A moment’s conversation with him convinced me of it. His smile was the only human thing about him. His brain was primordial. Joe Wesson said of him later that he was the sort of man who, if you told him to take away a plate and his hands were full of glasses, he would drop the glasses to pick up the plate. I asked him to show us to our rooms. He began to gobble at us confusedly like a turkey. His face became red. He gesticulated. Though his Italian was almost unintelligible, I gathered that he had received no booking. I told him to ring up the Splendido. I had seen a telephone at the end of the bar. He shrugged his shoulders and said he had no room anyway.
‘What’s he gibbering about?’ Joe asked. And when I told him, his cheeks began to quiver with anger. ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Tell the oaf to take his head out of that ridiculous hatch and come out here where my toe can get acquainted with the seat of his pants. I’d be delighted to have an excuse to go back to that nice comfortable hotel. But I’m damned if I go down that slittovia again. Once is quite enough for one day.’
I opened the door that framed Aldo’s face and he came out, looking scared. I told him that my friend and I were getting angry. He began to gabble Italian at us again. ‘Oh, to hell with it!’ Joe exclaimed. ‘Let’s have a look at the rooms. There should be six and I was told only two were occupied.’
I nodded and we tramped up the uncarpeted stairs, Aldo following with a flood of Italian. At the top was a long corridor. The rooms were little match-board cubicles leading off it. The first door I opened revealed an empty room. I turned to Aldo. He spread his arms and drew down the corners of his mouth. The next door I opened showed a room with the bed unmade and clothes strewn around. The third room was actually occupied. Aldo had rushed to prevent my opening it, but Joe had swept him aside. A short, neat little man with long, sleek hair turning grey at the temples and a face that looked like a piece of dark crinkled rubber stood facing the door as I opened it. He was wildly over-dressed for a man living in the Col da Varda hut. He wore a natty near-dun-coloured suiting, a blue silk shirt and a yellow tie with red yachts sailing across it. He held a comb in his left hand and his attitude was curiously defensive. ‘You are looking for me?’ he asked in almost perfect English.
I hastened to explain. Aldo ducked beneath Joe’s arm and became voluble. It was a duet in English and Italian. The occupant of the room cut Aldo short with a gesture of annoyance. ‘My name is Stefan Valdini,’ he said. ‘This man is a fool,’ he added, pointing to Aldo. ‘He tries to save himself work by discouraging people from staying here. He is a lazy dog.’ He had a soft purring voice that was a shade better than suave. ‘Cretino!’ He flung the offensive term mildly at Aldo as though it were common usage. ‘There are four rooms vacant. Give the English the two end ones.’
I had expected Aldo to become angry—you can call an Italian a bastard and give the crudest and most colourful description of his entire family and he will do no more than grin, but call him ‘cretino’ and he usually bec
omes speechless with rage. But Aldo only grinned slavishly and said, ‘Si, si, Signor Valdini—pronto.’
So we found ourselves ushered into the two end cubicles. The window of Joe’s room looked straight down the trackway of the slittovia. Mine, however, faced south across the belvedere. I could only see the slittovia by leaning out and getting the drips from the over-hanging snow down my neck. It was a grand view. The whole hillside of pines fell away, rank on rank of pointed tree-tops, to the valley. And to the right, above me, the great bastions of Monte Cristallo towered cold and forbidding even in the sunlight. ‘Rum place, Neil.’ Joe Wesson’s bulk filled the narrow doorway. ‘Who was the little man who looked like a pimp for a high-class bordello? Behaved as though he owned the place.’
‘Don’t know,’ I said. I was busy unpacking my things and my mind was thinking what a place it was for the setting of a ski-ing film. ‘Oldest inhabitant, perhaps—though he certainly looked as though he’d be more at home in a night club.’
‘Well, now we’re in we may as well have a drink to celebrate,’ Joe muttered. ‘I’ll be at the bar. I’m going to try some of that red biddy they call grappa.’
The first sleigh-load of ski-ers arrived whilst I was still unpacking. They were a colourful crowd, sunburned and brightly clad. They thronged the belvedere, lounging in the warm sun, drinking out of tall glasses. They were talking happily in several languages. I watched them, fascinated, as in groups of two or three, or alone, they put on their skis and swooped out of sight down the slalom run to Tre Croci or disappeared into the dark firs, whooping ‘Libera!’ as they took the gentler track back to Cortina. Anna, a half-Italian, half-Austrian waitress, flirted in and out among the tables with trays laden with salami and eggs and ravioli. She had big laughing eyes and there was a quick smile and better service for the men who had no women with them. What a scene for technicolour! The colours stood out so startlingly against the black and white background.
The novelty of the setting was a spur to my determination to write something that Engles would accept. If I couldn’t write a script here, I knew I should never be able to write one. I was still planning the script in my mind as I went down to join Joe at the bar.
At the bottom of the stairs, I came upon a tall, rather distinguished-looking man who was having a heated argument with Aldo. He had long, very thick-growing hair, strangely shot with grey. His face was deeply tanned, except where the white of a scar showed against the bulge of his jaw muscles. He was wearing an all-white ski suit with a yellow scarf round his neck. I realised what the trouble was immediately. ‘Have you booked a room here?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This man is either a fool or he has given the room to somebody else and doesn’t want to admit it.’
‘I’ve just had the same trouble,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why he doesn’t want visitors. He just doesn’t. But there are two rooms vacant at the moment. There’s nobody in the one at the top of the stairs, so I should go up and stake your claim.’
‘I will. Many thanks.’ He gave me a lazy smile and took his things up the stairs. Aldo gave a shrug and dropped the corners of his mouth. Then he followed on.
Joe and I spent the remainder of the morning sitting out in the sunshine drinking cognac and discussing the shots Engles would expect. The multi-coloured plumage of the ski-ers and the babel of tongues that ranged from the tinselled guttural of Austrian to the liquid flood of Italian was a background to our conversation; absorbed, but not remarked in detail. Joe was no longer disgruntled at being perched up here on the cold shoulder of an Alp. He was a cameraman now, interested only in angles and lights and setting. He was an artist who has been given a good subject. And I was doubly preoccupied—I was listening to Joe and at the same time rolling an idea for a script round my mind.
I did not notice her arrive. I don’t know how long she had been there. I just glanced up suddenly and saw her. Her head and shoulders stood out against the white back-cloth of a snow-draped fir. For a second I was puzzled. I thought I knew her and yet I could not place her. Then, as I stared, she took off her dark glasses and looked straight at me, dangling them languidly between long slender brown fingers. And then I remembered and dived for my wallet and the photograph Engles had given me.
The likeness was striking. But I wasn’t sure. The photograph was old and faded, and the girl who had signed herself ‘Carla’ had shorter, sleeked-back hair. But the features looked the same. I glanced up again at the woman seated at the table on the other side of the belvedere. Her raven-black hair swept up in a great wave above her high forehead and tumbled in a mass to her shoulders. The way she sat and her every movement proclaimed an almost animal consciousness of her body. She wasn’t particularly young, nor was she particularly beautiful. Her mouth, scarlet to match her ski suit, was too wide and full, and there were deep lines at the corners of her eyes. But she was exciting. She was all of a man’s baser thoughts come true. She caught my eye as I compared her with the photograph in my hand. Her glance was an idle caress, speculative and not disinterested, like the gaze of an animal that is bored and is looking for someone to play with.
‘My God, Neil!’ Joe tapped me on the arm. ‘Are you trying to bed that woman down?’
‘Don’t be revolting,’ I said. I felt slightly embarrassed. Joe was so solidly British in that foreign set-up. ‘Why make a vulgar suggestion like that on a lovely morning?’
‘You were looking at her as though you wanted to eat her,’ he replied. ‘She’s got that little Valdini chap for boy-friend. You want to go steady with these people. Knives, you know. They’re not civilised. He struck me as an ugly little fellow to start an argument with over a girl.’ He was right. The man sitting oppos-ite her was Valdini. He had his back towards us.
‘Don’t be absurd, Joe,’ I said. Then I showed him the photograph, keeping my thumb across the writing. ‘Is that the same girl?’ I asked him.
He cocked his head on one side and screwed up his little bloodshot eyes. ‘Hmm. Could be. How did you get hold of that?’
‘It’s the picture of an Italian actress,’ I lied quickly. ‘I knew her in Naples just before Anzio. She gave it to me then. The point is—is the woman sitting over there the girl I knew or not?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘And frankly, old man, I don’t give a damn. But it seems to me that the best way to find out is to go and ask her.’
Joe, of course, did not realise the difficulty. Engles had said, do nothing. But I had to be certain. It seemed so fantastic that she should turn up on the very first day I was at Col da Varda. But the likeness was certainly striking. I suddenly made up my mind and got to my feet. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and find out.’
‘Well, don’t go treading on the corns of that over-dressed little pimp. I’m a good chucker-out in a London bar. But I’m too big a target to play around with people I suspect of being expert knife-throwers.’
She had seen me get up and her eyes watched me intently as I crossed the belvedere. Valdini looked up as I reached the table. ‘Excuse me,’ I said to her, ‘but I feel sure I met you when I was in Italy with the British Army.’
There was an awkward pause. She was watching me. So was Valdini. Then she gave me a sudden warm smile. ‘I do not think so,’ she said in English. Her voice was deep and liquid. It was like a purr. ‘But you look nice. Come and sit down and tell me about it.’
Valdini, who had been watching me guardedly, now sprang to his feet. Polished and suave, he produced a chair for me from the next table.
‘Well,’ she said as I sat down, ‘where was it that we met?’
I hesitated. Her eyes were very dark and they were looking at me with open amusement. ‘I think your name is Carla,’ I said.
The eyes suddenly went blank. They were cold and hard—hard like the eyes in the photograph.
‘I think you have made a mistake,’ she said coldly.
Valdini came to the rescue. ‘Perhaps I should make an introduction. This is the
Contessa Forelli. And this is Mr Blair. He is from an English film company.’ I wondered how he had found that out and why he had taken the trouble.
‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought your surname might be—Rometta.’
I was convinced she caught her breath. But her eyes did not change. She had control of herself. ‘Well, now perhaps you know you have made a mistake, Mr Blair,’ she said.
I was still not sure. I pulled the photograph out of my pocket and showed it to her. ‘Surely this is a photograph of you?’ I said. I kept the bottom part covered.
She leaned forward quickly. ‘Where did you get that?’ There was nothing purrful about her voice as she shot the question at me. It was hard and angry and brittle. Then, with an abrupt change of tone, she said, ‘No, you can see for yourself that it is not my photograph. But it is strange. It is a great likeness. Let me look at it.’ And she extended a strong brown hand imperiously.
I pretended not to hear her request. I put the photograph back in my pocket. ‘Most extraordinary!’ I murmured. ‘The likeness is quite remarkable. I felt certain—’ I rose to my feet. ‘You must excuse me Contessa,’ I said, bowing. ‘The likeness is quite extraordinary.’
‘Don’t go, Mr Blair.’ She gave me a hard, brilliant smile and the purr was back in her voice. ‘Stay and have a drink—and tell me more about that photograph. It is so nearly myself that I would like to know more about it. I am intrigued. Stefan, order a drink for Mr Blair.’
‘No, please, Contessa,’ I said. ‘I have been guilty of sufficient bad manners for one day. Please accept my apologies. It was the likeness—I had to be certain.’
I went back to Joe. ‘Well,’ he said, as I resumed my seat, ‘was she the girl or not?’
‘I think so,’ I told him.
‘Couldn’t you make certain?’
‘She didn’t want to be recognised,’ I explained.
‘I don’t blame her,’ he grunted. ‘I wouldn’t want to be recognised in the company of that little tyke, especially if I were a woman. Look at him getting up now. He positively bounces with his own self-importance.’
The Lonely Skier Page 4