Beneath the Mountain

by Luca D'Andrea

  He let the sentence hang.

  “I was nervous, very nervous. I’ve never been upset by thunder. In fact, I like it. All that power unleashed on the earth makes me feel, I don’t know, as if I’m dealing with something bigger than me. And it’s a nice feeling. But that evening, the thunder and lightning drove me crazy. I couldn’t keep still. To calm myself down, I started checking my rescue kit. Not the equipment I used when I was on duty with the helicopter, but my old backpack, the one I used for operations on the ground. And when I’d closed the last buckle, there was a knock at the door. It was Hannes, Günther, and Max.”

  “Max Krün?” I asked, surprised. “The sheriff?”

  “The head of the Forest Rangers,” Werner corrected me. “Have you met him?”

  “Let’s say we had a little chat.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  I tried to find the right words to describe him. “The good uncle who dresses up as Santa Claus. But don’t piss him off.”

  Werner beat his hands on his knees, as a sign of approval. “You have a way with words, Jeremiah. The good uncle it’s best not to piss off. That’s exactly it. Did you piss him off?”

  “I came close.”

  “He’s a good man. Tough. He has to be, at least when he wears his uniform. But if you ever happen to talk to him when he’s not on duty, you’ll find he’s a pretty sharp person, full of common sense, very amusing.”

  “What was he doing in ’85?”

  “He was a simple forest ranger. Chief Hubner was still around, he died four years later, just before the Wall came down. In March he’d had his first heart attack, and even though Max was quite young he’d had to take on all his work. He came in with that little teenage face of his, his eyes like a beaten dog’s. Soaking wet. He was also very nervous. There was him, Hannes, and Günther. I knew both of them and neither looked as if they were in a good mood. I let them in and suggested a drop to warm themselves. They refused. I know it may sound ridiculous, but it was that refusal that really scared me.”

  “Why?”

  “Max was young, and in the absence of Chief Hubner it was obvious that he was feeling the pressure of a call-out, especially in that bad weather. But Hannes and Günther weren’t snotty-nosed kids. We were often called out suddenly in the middle of the night, it wasn’t new for us. Woodcutters who hadn’t come back home when it got dark, missing children, shepherds who’d ended up in a ditch, things like that. Hannes and Günther had seen it all before. Especially Hannes.”

  At last my mind made the connection. “Hannes. Hannes Schaltzmann,” I murmured. “Kurt’s father?”

  “That’s right.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to absorb that information. I tried to imagine what Hannes Schaltzmann must have felt finding his son’s body. I sat back in my chair, feeling the heat of the fire licking at my thighs.

  “And besides, Günther had never refused a drink. Especially not from my special reserve. By the way, would you like one?”

  He didn’t wait for my reply. He stood up and fetched the bottle. He made the glasses clink.

  “Special reserve. Prepared according to an age-old Mair recipe. My ancestors must have been rich once, but all that remains from that time are some excellent recipes. Not that I’m complaining—on the contrary.”

  “Why do you say rich?”

  “Because of the surname. Mair. It means landowner. Many German surnames mean something, usually they indicate professions. Mair is the local variant of Mayer, a landowner. Schneider is a tailor. Fischer, a fisherman, Müller, a miller. Does your name mean something?”

  “I’m an American,” I said. “Our names don’t mean anything.”

  Werner closed the bottle again and handed me the glass. “Grappa with pepper. Produced, bottled, and selected by yours truly, Werner Mair.”

  “To old stories,” I toasted.

  “To old stories,” Werner echoed. “May they stay where they are.”

  It was liquid fire. Once the flame passed, the heat turned into a lovely warmth below the sternum, accompanied by a pleasant tickling on the tongue.

  Werner cleared his throat, filched a cigarette from my packet, and resumed his story.

  “It was Hannes who’d raised the alarm. He’d spent all day out of the village, working, and when he got back had discovered from his wife, Helene, that Kurt and the others had gone on an outing to the Bletterbach. They’d taken a tent with them because the idea was to do a bit of camping. At first, Hannes hadn’t worried. Even though the two of them hadn’t spoken since Kurt had gone to live in Innsbruck, Hannes was aware that his son knew his stuff. He’d been a rescuer and, even though it’s not true, we rescuers feel a bit as if we’re the elite of the mountains. If for no other reason than because, unlike many people, we know how to predict and avoid risky situations.”

  “But then, I assume the storm grew worse, a self-regenerating storm, and Hannes got worried.”

  “No, not at first,” Werner said. “They don’t last long. They’re powerful, that’s true, but they last three hours at most and then they die down. But this one wasn’t dying down. On the contrary, it seemed as if its strength was increasing from minute to minute.”

  “And that’s when Hannes raised the alarm.”

  Once again I was wrong.

  “Nix. Hannes left home and went to the Forest Rangers’ barracks because he wanted to talk to Max. The lights had blown and the telephones were dead, but in the barracks there was a shortwave radio for emergencies. Hannes wanted to use it to communicate with Civil Defense in Bolzano and to find out if there was any reason to worry. Max wasn’t there, so Hannes went to his house, but didn’t find him in. It was the birthday of the girl who would later become his wife, Verena. Hannes turned up in the middle of the party like Banquo’s ghost. He apologized for butting in and told Max that he needed the shortwave radio. They went back to the barracks and tried to get in contact with Bolzano.”

  “They tried?”

  “Too much lightning. The communication was so distorted, it was like sticking your head inside a washing machine. They’d never come across anything like it. They got scared. It was only at that point that they decided to organize a rescue mission. On the way, they stopped at Günther’s, and the three of them came to my house. As I said, I already had my equipment ready, as if I was expecting them.” He shook his head. “A premonition? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

  “It was around midnight,” he continued after a slight pause, “when we left in the rescue team’s jeep. We left the village and had to stop twice. The first time to move a fallen tree trunk, the second because part of the road had slipped and we had to anchor the jeep to a rock to try and overcome the obstacle.”

  “The situation was that bad?”

  “Worse.” Werner stood up and took out a map from a drawer. “This is the point where the dirt road leading to the Bletterbach stopped.” He ran his finger backward several centimeters. “But we only managed to get as far as here.”

  I calculated. “Three kilometers away?”

  “Four. The rest was a quagmire. We knew that in those conditions we’d do better to turn back and wait for the storm to abate.”

  “But the son of one of your colleagues was out there.”

  “So it was out of the question. We pressed on. It was raining stones everywhere, we could feel them whistling past our ears. The road was a river of mud and every step might mean a sprain or a fracture. Not to mention the trees and the landslides.”

  With his thick finger he pointed to a contour line on the map, almost in the middle of the Bletterbach, but slightly to the east.

  “They were here, but we didn’t know that.”

  “Was there a path?”

  Werner grimaced. “A kind of path. They’d followed it only up until a certain point . . .”—he indicated it on the map—“. . . more or less around here. Then they’d veered west, but still moving in a northerly direction, and then made a second detour and star
ted climbing. As far as here.”

  “Did you ever understand why?”

  “The path must have become impassable by about four in the afternoon, and Kurt must have thought that by bearing west they could walk on the layer of rock, instead of on the clayey, crumblier layer where the path was.”

  “But why on earth did they then change their minds?”

  “I assume, although this is only my speculation, that his initial idea had been to reach the caves, here, you see?”

  “Caves?”

  “The old name of Siebenhoch was Siebenhöhlen, which means ‘seven caves.’ He probably hoped to find a dry hole where they could spend the evening. Except that at sunset, having figured out this was no normal storm, he realized they’d never get there and so opted to go east and move up a level. You see here and here? These are little depressions that must have been waterlogged, so the only way to go up was this way. And here, in a clearing, is where we found them. They’d pitched the tent under a rocky spur, with their backs to the mountain, so that the wind wouldn’t blow it away.” A pause, which I used to calculate how many kilometers they must have trekked. “Kurt was good. And cautious.”

  “How much later did you find them?”

  “The next day,” was Werner’s brief reply.

  “The next day?” I echoed, stunned. It struck me as incredible that four well-trained and well-drilled men, long-time mountaineers, could have taken so long to traverse two points that seemed so close on the map.

  But that’s because I was a city kid, without much imagination.

  If only I’d taken the trouble to visualize the inferno of water, mud, and lightning that Werner had tried to describe, I would surely not have been so surprised. Besides, I was reasoning with the famous benefit of hindsight, the element of which cemeteries are full. I knew that Kurt and the others were at that point only because Werner had told me, but the rescue team on the night of April 28 and 29 hadn’t the slightest idea.

  “It was a nasty night. And a very long one. I repeat: I kept telling myself that we should turn back.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No.”

  I waited for Werner to pick up the thread of his story.

  “The flashlights didn’t help us much, but at least they made sure we didn’t end up in a crevasse. We just needed to count the white dots. Around three in the morning, Günther was hit by a big stone that smashed his helmet. He threw it aside, muttered a couple of curses, and kept on searching, as if nothing had happened. Even though it was completely useless, we became hoarse from shouting. At five, we allowed ourselves a break, not more than half an hour.”

  Again he indicated the route on the map.

  “We made a wrong choice. We’d taken the right direction, northwest, but we assumed Kurt had decided to keep above the tree line.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because that’s where you were least likely to be buried in a mudslide. He surely wouldn’t have gone and stuck himself in the middle of the gorge between the mud and the water from the stream: that would have been suicide.”

  “Kurt had gone northwest . . .”

  “Yes, but much lower than we were. In addition, he’d veered east, whereas we’d kept straight ahead. But with that noise, the darkness, and those stones flying in all directions like shrapnel, we may well have passed right by those poor kids without even realizing it. Sad, but true.”

  “When did you decide to head east?”

  “We didn’t decide, we got lost.”

  I opened my eyes wide. “You got lost?”

  “We were exhausted. It was seven in the morning and as dark as if it was midnight. We turned right instead of left. And when we realized that we were near the bottom of the gorge we almost lost Max, who was swept away by the stream. He was only saved thanks to Günther’s quick reflexes. We decided we weren’t going to find Evi, Kurt, and Markus, and that if we didn’t make a move we ourselves would die in that hole.”

  He showed me the long curve of the route taken by the rescue team.

  “At midday we stopped here.”

  His finger lingered over an area to the east of the gorge, and I couldn’t help noticing that as the crow flies it was less than a kilometer from the spot where they would eventually find the bodies of the three young people.

  “We were completely exhausted. I had a painful cough and we were hungry. We rested for about an hour. The visibility was no more than two meters. It was terrible. We were dying of fear, even though we’d never have admitted it out loud. We’d never seen a storm like that before. It was as if nature had decided to attack us. You see, Jeremiah, usually the mountains are . . . the mountains don’t give a damn about you. They’re neither good nor bad. They’re beyond the insignificant feelings of mortals. They’ve been here for millions of years and God knows how much longer they’ll still be here. To them, you’re nothing. But that day, we all felt the same sensation. The Bletterbach had it in for us. It wanted to kill us.” He sat back in his armchair and put the map aside. “And now I think I need to take a break.”

  * * *

  Werner decided to smoke one of my Marlboros in the doorway, under the overhanging roof. We stood there looking at the snow falling, in silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts. Finally, as if he were about to be subjected to a further torture session, he motioned to me to come back inside.

  It was time to finish the story.

  * * *

  “By about three in the afternoon, it looked as if the worst was over. It wasn’t true, but that little bit of extra light raised our morale. We started searching again. An hour later, we found them. Hannes was the first to spot what remained of the tent. A scrap of red material caught on a branch.”

  He waved his arm, miming the scene.

  “The clearing where they’d camped was a few meters ahead, behind a chestnut tree that obscured my vision. As soon as I saw that scrap of tent . . .” Werner shook his head. “That piece of material, that red on a black and green background, was like the cat in Alice in Wonderland.”

  “The Cheshire cat?”

  “It was as if the Bletterbach was making fun of us. There was a nasty atmosphere there. I could feel it just as I could smell the mud in my nostrils. Except that it had nothing to do with the sense of smell. It was a sensation I felt under my skin. A kind of electric current. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  I certainly did.

  Werner stared at my scar. “We went ahead. Hannes in front, Max and Günther behind, and me trying to keep up with them with my painful calf. Then I heard the scream. I’ve never heard a more frightful scream than that one. The hair stood up on my head. It was Hannes. We were rooted to the spot. Günther in front of me and Max in front of him. I forced myself to move my legs, but they were paralyzed. In the mountains we call it ‘being in cast iron.’ It happens when you have a panic attack or when you have too much lactic acid in your muscles. That was it, my legs were in cast iron.”

  “A powerful metaphor.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t convey the fear I felt at that moment. Even though the man who’d screamed was one of my best friends, a man I would have risked my life for, knowing he’d have done the same for me, my first instinct was to run. And then . . .”

  Beast, I thought.

  The Beast.

  “What happened?”

  “Max threw himself on Hannes, grabbed him by the arms and threw him down into the mud. He saved his life. At the time, I didn’t understand, I thought he was having a panic attack. The clearing was only about four and a half meters wide. Above it was a spur of rock, and on the spur what remained of a fir tree. On our side there was the chestnut, as I said, which covered the scene, on the other side more fir trees and then a precipice. If it hadn’t been for Max, Hannes would have thrown himself over it. He wanted to kill himself and Max stopped him.”

  “Christ.”

  “I grabbed Hannes, and Günther slapped him a couple of times.
He was beside himself. I took Hannes and hugged him as tight as I could. I wept. I wept a lot. I wept for Hannes, who was still screaming and screaming, his eyes bulging from his sockets. I wept for what I was seeing. What I wasn’t seeing, because as I hugged Hannes to stop him from throwing himself into the void, I kept my eyes closed tight. But what little I’d seen was stamped in my brain, very clearly. I don’t know how long I stayed in that position. I broke free of Hannes and we laid him under the chestnut, with a ground sheet to shield him from the rain and . . .”

  His voice broke.

  “The canvas had been ripped by something sharp. A blade. There was stuff everywhere. And they, too, were . . . everywhere. Kurt was in the middle of the clearing, eyes facing the sky, open. He was looking at the clouds, but he didn’t have a peaceful expression on his face, I can assure you of that. Both his arms were missing. One was half a meter from his chest, the other in the undergrowth. He had a wound right here”—he beat his sternum—“a clean wound. A blow with an axe or a big knife, the Carabinieri said.”

  “An axe?”

  “Evi had both her legs cut off at the knees.”

  I felt a wad of bile rise through my esophagus.

  “She had her right arm broken, as if she’d tried to defend herself. And her head was missing.”

  I had to get up and run to the bathroom. I threw up. It didn’t make me feel any better.

  I found Werner with a steaming cup of camomile in his right hand. I accepted it gratefully. I lit a cigarette. I wanted to get rid of that horrible taste.

  “Go on, Werner.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Did you find it? Evi’s head, I mean.”

  “We didn’t find it, and nor did the Carabinieri. In fact, what the Carabinieri found was much less than what the four of us saw. The storm had taken away quite a bit of stuff in the meantime, but also . . .”—he lowered his voice, almost apologetically—“you know, the animals . . .”