Like Gilbert, he was very sensitive to the crucifixes with which the valleys abounded. Either at the foot or at the head of the cross were usually the sacred initials, INRI, on a scroll.
“Inry!” said Stanley. “Another Inry! Have they none of them got any homes to go to and any mothers? Lor lummy, Hinry! Woman, what have I to do with thee?” He strayed on inconsequently, singing:
“Henery the eighth I am I am Henery the eighth I am.”
“We have a friend,” said Johanna, “a Baron Potowski. And he was an only son, and his mother adored him. But when he was a student he was very wild. So one day his mother came to Bonn to see him, and she met him in the street, and he was very drunk. ‘Ach Heinrich! Heinrich!’ — ’Weib, ich kenne dich nicht!’ he said to her solemnly, and he marched on. Poor Frau von Potowski. It nearly broke her heart.”
“Weib, ich kenne dich nicht!” repeated Stanley with joy. “Woman, I know thee not. I’ll cable it to my mother if she doesn’t send me something tomorrow.”
“But it isn’t that in the English bible,” said Johanna.
“Woman, what have I to do with thee? — But I like Weib, ich kenne dich nicht. I shall cable that to my mother.”
“You won’t be so horrid to her,” said Johanna.
“Isn’t she horrid to me? Doesn’t she pray for me, and have another bout of nerves? Doesn’t she make the house smell of valerian? Isn’t she a bitch? Has she written to me since I’m back from Odessa? Weib, ich kenne dich nicht.”
“Jawohl!” said Johanna.
Stanley’s mother was to come to London, and he was to meet her there.
“Oh my poor father, won’t he be glad to be rid of her for a bit. But fancy a woman who swallows valerian! He bears with her, he bears with her. I tell her, she’s like a sick persian cat.
Oh my poor father! And he’s stood it for nearly thirty years. Of course she’ll never die.”
“No, you’re too bad. You don’t want her to die.”
“I do! I do! I’m going to tell her I’m pining for her death.”
“She’ll only laugh.”
“No she won’t. She’ll swallow valerian, like a bewitched cat, and threaten to pray for me. Let her if she dares! I’ve promised her, if she prays for me again what’ll happen to her. — Hello Inry! You’re there again, are you? My compliments to Maria. Lord what a lot of Inrys she brought forth at a shot.
‘Ennery the eighth I am. I got married to the woman next door She’d been married seven times before And every time ‘twas an Ennery, She never had a Willie nor a Sam; I’m the eighth old man called Ennery, Ennery the Eighth I am.’“
“Aren’t you wicked!” said Johanna.
“Me? I’m mother’s little pet lamb. I’m Ennery the eighty- eighth I am I am. And you’re an adulteress you are. You’re a Scarlet Letter. So don’t you go saying nothing to me, so there.”
“I’m glad I’m a red letter. Most folks are dead letters,” said Johanna.
“Paste restantes, like my mother. She’s a blooming belated poste restante. She’s a fermo in posta she is.”
“And you love her.”
“Lor’ golly, I don’t and never did. I hate and abominate her for a bitch. I’m always telling her. But it doesn’t seem to do her much good.”
The party decided to move on. Johanna and Gilbert had been a fortnight in one place. Time to go. So they packed up once more and put their goods on the railway. Then, four together, they prepared to set off into the mountains, to cross the Gemserjoch and descend to the Imperial Road again well below the Brenner, on the southern slope.
At the last moment arrived a postcard from Stanley’s mother. She was in London — ”and have had so many headaches since I am here that I have had several nuits blanches — ”
“Lor-lummy!” cried Stanley, “hark at her! Writes a postcard to say she’s had several nuits blanches. Oh, why has nobody ever smacked it out of her. Nuits blanches My poor father. He married her for her beauty, and wasn’t he taken in! Got a nuit blanche instead — a damn blanched bad egg. Golly, I can’t stand that woman any longer. Here, take her postcard.”
And he tore it in bits and flung it into the stream, which now had a second set of fragments to carry towards the Danube.
So they set off, Stanley fuming about nuits blanches — his mother’s white nights of sleeplessness — Terry murmuring esoterically about the marvels of eurythmics — Johanna shocked and a little bewildered, but withal charmed by the graceless son, and Gilbert silendy wondering. Of course there were all kinds of worlds besides his own. Meanwhile the stream ran hastily on below, in the opposite direction.
They took the high-road inwards, into the knot of the valley. The high-road ended, they followed the bridle-path in the ravine. Here, in the gloom, stood one of the largest crucifixes.
“Goodbye Inry,” said Stanley to the figure. “See you later, old boy. Best wishes to Maria.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t,” said Johanna. “It really makes me unhappy.”
“There y’are, Inry!” said Stanley, turning round to the figure. “Here’s another of ‘em. Another nuit-blancher. Another Blanche newter. Lor-lummy, Blanche neuter. We’ve struck it Inry. Shake hands on it, old sport. So long. See you later, as the hymn says.
‘We’re marching to Zion Beautiful beautiful Zion “‘
They crossed the covered bridge, which always appealed to Gilbert’s fancy, and proceeded along the other side of the ravine. From time to time Terry, whose knapsack was enormous because of his blotting-paper book and press-covers, went scrambling up or scrambling down the ravine, for a yellow violet or a bit of butterwort or some other flower. Sometimes they met a couple of pack mules, sometimes a priest. Servus! Servus! came the greeting. On straggled the four. Each one had a rucksack. It was a fine day, so Johanna’s was bulky with her burberry. She had her old panama hat.
At noon they made a fire, grilled bits of meat and made scrambled eggs. Terry had a famous receipt for scrambled eggs, so he took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and altogether was as portentous as an alchemist concocting the elixir of life. Stanley did nothing, but complained and wailed whimsically. They went on to the next village where they bought food — then on till dusk, which found them in a high, shallow open valley, grassy, rather forlorn, high up under heaven. They had been climbing all the time. Behind them, about three miles back, was the village where they had bought food — the last village till they came once more to the world’s roads, over the southern slope. In front, nothing they could be sure of. But in the meadow, a block-house for hay — another hay-hut.
So they all voted for it. It was of two storeys, with a platform round the upper storey. Up they climbed, and Terry, who always had the scientific and alchemistic theories, decided where it would be safe to cook the food, so as not to burn the place down.
Dusk had well fallen. It was cold — very cold. Part of a moon was low in the sky, and a smell of snow. There were no high peaks near — only upper, roundish rock-slopes on which lay slashes of snow. In the darkening twilight they crouched over the spirit lamps on the platform of the hay-hut, trying to keep off the cold draughts from the flame. No living creatures were in sight — nor cows nor human habitation. Only the slopes beyond, the shallow, shorn meadow near, the rocky bridle-path and a little stream between rocks and marshy places.
Terry in triumph, always more like an occult alchemist than a mere cook, mysteriously brought off the ham and eggs. They ate rapidly and rather silently, inside the hay-loft in the almost-darkness. Stanley complained because he lost his slice of sausage. Then mysteriously they packed up and prepared for sleep. Terry of course gave a brief exhibition of how to sleep in a hay-hut, in deep hay. One made a hole as deep as possible, and etc. etc. etc. and finally one was buried completely under three feet of hay.
“You don’t need any breathing hole,” said Terry in answer to Gilbert’s expostulation. “The atmosphere travels quite freely through hay, and the small amount of retardation is only ju
st enough to ensure warmth.”
This being so, Johanna and Gilbert prepared a large matrimonial burrow for the two of them, whilst at brief distances the two men burrowed in separate holes. It was quite dark. The faintness of the moon was gone again under clouds, there was wind hissing. But heaven be praised, this hay-house was solider than that other, warmer. Gilbert, staring through his hay, could not make out the cracks in the door — it was so dark altogether.
Johanna drew him into an embrace. The other men were so near — yet it was so dark. She seemed so fierce. And he let himself go, buried there in darkness and in hay. Buried — fiercely active, but buried. Buried alive. He felt as the creatures must do, which live in lairs deep under the earth, and know their passions there. Deep under hay and darkness.
The night passed fairly well. It was warm, and therefore the irritation of hay was not intolerable. Yet by the first greyings of dawn all were up, and Terry had discovered how to make the tea safely inside the hut, among the hay near the door. It was cold and rather blowy outside. And they did not want some farmer to come and abuse them before they had had their tea and were ready to go. So they moved rather stealthily.
The dawn came grey outside. It had snowed in the night — heavy snow — but not quite down to their level. The road and the grass-alp were still free. But on the slope just above — it seemed only a few yards above — there was snow, and great snow-slopes of deep, new white snow just beyond them. Strange it was to see it, when the August morning began to be blue and the sunlight clear. It was a lovely morning after all. When they came to a stream — their own was but a trickle — they washed and were refreshed. But not inwardly warmed. So they were glad when they came to a single wooden house which provided refreshments for mountain excursionists. There they could have hot coffee and milk, plenty, and fried eggs and ham. It was good — especially the hot, rich milk: so restoring.
Other excursionists came, footing the same way.
The four went on, Gilbert and Terry usually botanising together, Johanna and Stanley talking. The sun came suddenly quite fierce, quite fiercely hot. There were little fir-trees, little woods of fir, and many cranberries, many clusters of scarlet and coral cranberries in tufts everywhere, on the rocks overhead and the rocks beneath, as they climbed the winding mule-path upwards. They ate cranberries all the afternoon, after having had a jolly lunch near another small hut for travellers, which sold some food and sweet fruit syrups.
It was about five o’clock when they came at last to the top of the climb — into a shallow last valley, where stood a house of brown wood, the accommodation for travellers this side the pass. Other walkers, mountaineers, excursionists, four or five, were here for the night. Our pedestrians got their rooms, had coffee and cake, and went out to look at the world, as the night fell.
It was a wonderful place — the last upland cradle where the summer grass grew. At the end, about a mile off, was a vast precipice, like a wall, and beyond that a cluster of mountain peaks, in heaven alone, snow and sky-rock. That was the end.
But nearer, on the flanks, were the last fir-trees, rather wispy and cold-shrivelled, growing in patches. Between these, and around them, the rock avalanches, like terrific arrested floods of rock and stones. Then smoothish rocky-grassy slopes. While in the valley bed itself, great rocks cropped out naked, there was the inevitable hay-house like another rock all alone, there were strange marshes with vegetation, that curious cold-bitten, cold-shrunk vegetation.
Gilbert went botanising with Terry up one of the rock rivers round the corner of the trees. And what looked like a slope of stones, when they clambered up amongst it was a jagged mass of great broken rocks that had wedged and ceased to slip. It was rather terrifying, as the silent, icy twilight drew on, to be jumping one’s way across these jagged massive avalanches. Even the fir-trees and some of the green growth that Terry was exploring grew out of the hollows between the blocks of avalanche rock. And the tiny stream-bed was so deep and difficult in the side of the great slope, once one was in it.
Gilbert was really rather frightened. There was something terrific about this upper world. Things which looked small and near were rather far, and when one reached them, they were big, great masses where one expected stones, jagged valley where one saw just a hollow groove. He had climbed alone rather high — and he suddenly realised how tiny he was — no bigger than a fly. Such terrible, such raw, such stupendous masses of the rock-element heaved and confused. Such terrible order in it all. He looked at the inaccessible, dread-holy peaks of snow and black rock beyond the precipice — and the vast slopes opposite, the vast slope on which he was overwhelmed, the fir-trees just below like a hairy fringe. It all looked of a comfortable human size. And now that he was scrambling between fierce rocks which had looked to him like stones, now he felt all the suspended mass of unutterably fierce rocks round him, he knew it was not human, not life- size. It was all bigger than life-size, much bigger, and fearful.
He clambered and jumped down again, hastening to get back. He wanted to get back, back to the level of the cranberries and the grass, back to the path, to the house. He had lost Terry, and was alone.
It did not take him very long to get down. He seemed to be climbing down out of the light into a trough of substantial shadow. He threaded his way through the marshy place, where some hay was still hung out like washing to dry, upon the cross-sticks. As he got near the house he heard the tong- tong of the cow-bells, and saw the cows being driven into their house. At the front door of the accommodation house stood a mule whose packs were being unladen. Somebody was playing a zither.
He went upstairs, but Johanna was not there. Stooping to look out of the window, he saw the flush of evening on the peaks. Strange and icy the heart became — without human emotion — up here: abstracted, in the eternal loneliness. The eternal and everlasting loneliness. And the beauty of it, and the richness of it. The everlasting isolation in loneliness, while the sun comes and goes, and night falls and rises. The heart in its magnificent isolation like a peak in heaven, forever. The beauty, the beauty of fate, which decrees that in our supremacy we are single and alone, like peaks that finish off in their perfect isolation in the ether. The ultimate perfection of being quite alone.
It seemed to be getting dark. Yellow lamp-light streamed out below, from the doorway. Where was Johanna? He went downstairs to look. She was not in the one public- room — where was a bar and the tables at which one ate. Terry was there with his almighty blotting-paper book. Gilbert went to the door. There was Johanna sauntering up with Stanley.
“Where have you been?” said Gilbert.
“We went a walk — that way — ” and she pointed across the grass to the left, through rocks, towards the hay-house in the darkening distance. “Where did you go?”
“I climbed to get up.”
“Isn’t it wonderful!”
“Yes. Do you like it here, Stanley?” asked Gilbert.
“Marvellous!” said Stanley. “Marvellous.”
“Can we eat soon?” asked Johanna.
“I don’t know,” said Gilbert.
Before long they were eating hot broth, and lumps of boiled beef — and after that an omelette with jam — at one of the little tables in the public-room that was just the bar-room of a public-house, quite bare of ornament, but warmed by a big glazed stove. It was warm, and they ate and were happy.
After supper Johanna walked for a few minutes with Gilbert, holding his arm. Stars were in the sky, big, bright, splendid.
“It’s so marvellous,” she said, “it frightens me.”
“So it does me.”
They went soon indoors, and to bed. Somebody, somewhere at the back, was playing a zither — and making love. The sound was unmistakeable. Everybody went to bed by nine o’clock. The upstairs was icy cold: the bedrooms just bare cells, two single beds in the finches’ room. Gilbert felt he had never got into such a thoroughly cold bed. Johanna cried to him to come and help her to get warm. But it was impossible t
o sleep two in one small bed. So after a while he hopped back. And once one was warm one was very warm under the huge down bolster, which seemed to rise like a balloon above the sleepers’ noses.
The morning came clear and sunny. Our four were rather excited at the thought of crossing the Gemserjoch, over the ridge to the south slope. This side still was Germany, with the north behind it. The other side was the southern Tyrol, all Italy in front. Even geographically, one can pass so definite a turning-point.
There were various other pedestrians, tourists, setting off from the wooden rest-house to cross the pass. They had guides too. The guides said there was much snow: that the boots and shoes of the four were too thin. But if people walked over a pass quite easily in thick boots they could walk in thinner ones. Our four would not saddle themselves with a guide: they had no belief in any difficulties.
So, in the first sunshine, they set off, climbing gently the rocky, roundish slope. Flat iron peaks, slashed fierce with snow, stood away to the right. There was a thin but a very cold wind under a sharp sun.
It was a long, high-up, naked slope, not very steep. There were no more trees, the Alp-roses were tiny shrubs — then they left off. The road was almost pure rock, with pockets and patches of snow here and there. The first great pads of snow, silvery edged. And still the road wound, dipped into a scooped hollow, and inclined up again, naked among the great harsh rocks, over tracts of snow, over iron-bare rock surfaces, always aloft under a clear blue heaven. It was cold in the wind, hot in the sun. But they all felt light and excited. Every little crest ahead seemed the summit.
In a hollow of rock was a last little crucifix — the small wooden Christ all silvery-naked, a bit of old oak, under his hood. And neither Stanley nor Gilbert made any jokes. He was so old and rudimentary.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 299