The Nick Adams Stories Part 28

It was a thing you couldn't talk about. He was going to work on it until he got it. Maybe never, but he would know as he got near it. It was a job. Maybe for all his life.

People were easy to do. All this smart stuff was easy. Against this age, skysc.r.a.per primitives, c.u.mmings when he was smart, it was automatic writing, not The Enormous Room The Enormous Room, that was a book, it was one of the great books. c.u.mmings worked hard to get it.

Was there anybody else? Young Asch had something but you couldn't tell. Jews go bad quickly. They all start well. Mac had something. Don Stewart had the most next to c.u.mmings. Sometimes in the Haddocks. Ring Lardner, maybe. Very maybe. Old guys like Sherwood. Older guys like Dreiser. Was there anybody else? Young guys, maybe. Great unknowns. There are never any unknowns, though.

They weren't after what he was after.

He could see the Cezannes. The portrait at Gertrude Stein's. She'd know it if he ever got things right. The two good ones at the Luxembourg, the ones he'd seen every day at the loan exhibit at Bernheim's. The soldiers undressing to swim, the house through the trees, one of the trees with a house beyond, not the lake one, the other lake one. The portrait of the boy. Cezanne could do people, too. But that was easier, he used what he got from the country to do people with. Nick could do that, too. People were easy. n.o.body knew anything about them. If it sounded good they took your word for it. They took Joyce's word for it.

He knew just how Cezanne would paint this stretch of river. G.o.d, if he were only here to do it. They died and that was the h.e.l.l of it. They worked all their lives and then got old and died.

Nick, seeing how Cezanne would do the stretch of river and the swamp, stood up and stepped down into the stream. The water was cold and actual. He waded across the stream, moving in the picture. He kneeled down in the gravel on the bank and reached down into the trout sack. It lay in the stream where he had dragged it across the shallows. The old boy was alive. Nick opened the mouth of the sack and slid the trout into the shallow water and watched him move off through the shallows, his back out of water, threading between rocks toward the deep current.

"He was too big to eat," Nick said. "I'll get a couple of little ones in front of camp for supper."

He climbed the bank of the stream, reeling up his line and started through the brush. He ate a sandwich. He was in a hurry and the rod bothered him. He was not thinking. He was holding something in his head. He wanted to get back to camp and get to work.

He moved through the brush, holding the rod close to him. The line caught on a branch. Nick stopped and cut the leader and reeled the line up. He went through the brush now easily, holding the rod out before him.

Ahead of him he saw a rabbit, flat out on the trail. He stopped, grudging. The rabbit was barely breathing. There were two ticks on the rabbit's head, one behind each ear. They were gray, tight with blood, as big as grapes. Nick pulled them off, their heads tiny and hard, with moving feet. He stepped on them on the trail.

Nick picked up the rabbit, limp, with dull b.u.t.ton eyes, and put it under a sweet fern bush beside the trail. He felt its heart beating as he laid it down. The rabbit lay quiet under the bush, it might come to, Nick thought. Probably the ticks had attached themselves to it as it crouched in the gra.s.s. Maybe after it had been dancing in the open. He did not know.

He went on up the trail to the camp. He was holding something in his head.

An Alpine Idyll It was hot coming down into the valley even in the early morning. The sun melted the snow from the skis we were carrying and dried the wood. It was spring in the valley but the sun was very hot. We came along the road into Galtur carrying our skis and rucksacks. As we pa.s.sed the churchyard a burial was just over. I said, "Gruss Gott," to the priest as he walked past us coming out of the churchyard. The priest bowed.

"It's funny a priest never speaks to you," John said.

"You'd think they'd like to say 'Gruss Gott.' "

"They never answer," John said.

We stopped in the road and watched the s.e.xton shoveling in the new earth. A peasant with a black beard and high leather boots stood beside the grave. The s.e.xton stopped shoveling and straightened his back. The peasant in the high boots took the spade from the s.e.xton and went on filling in the grave-spreading the earth evenly as a man spreading manure in a garden. In the bright May morning the grave-filling looked unreal. I could not imagine anyone being dead.

"Imagine being buried on a day like this," I said to John.

"I wouldn't like it."

"Well," I said, "we don't have to do it."

We went on up the road past the houses of the town to the inn. We had been skiing in the Silvretta for a month, and it was good to be down in the valley. In the Silvretta the skiing had been all right, but it was spring skiing, the snow was good only in the early morning and again in the evening. The rest of the time it was spoiled by the sun. We were both tired of the sun. You could not get away from the sun. The only shadows were made by rocks or by the hut that was built under the protection of a rock beside a glacier, and in the shade the sweat froze in your underclothing. You could not sit outside the hut without dark gla.s.ses. It was pleasant to be burned black but the sun had been very tiring. You could not rest in it. I was glad to be down away from snow. It was too late in the spring to be up in the Silvretta. I was a little tired of skiing. We had stayed too long. I could taste the snow water we had been drinking melted off the tin roof of the hut. The taste was a part of the way I felt about skiing. I was glad there were other things besides skiing, and I was glad to be down, away from the unnatural high mountain spring, into this May morning in the valley.

The innkeeper sat on the porch of the inn, his chair tipped back against the wall. Beside him sat the cook.

"Ski-heil!" said the innkeeper.

"Heil!" we said and leaned the skis against the wall and took off our packs.

"How was it up above?" asked the innkeeper.

"Schon. A little too much sun."

"Yes. There's too much sun this time of year."

The cook sat on in his chair. The innkeeper went in with us and unlocked his office and brought out our mail. There was a bundle of letters and some papers.

"Let's get some beer," John said.

"Good. We'll drink it inside."

The proprietor brought two bottles and we drank them while we read the letters.

"We better have some more beer," John said. A girl brought it this time. She smiled as she opened the bottles.

"Many letters," she said.

"Yes. Many."

"Prosit," she said and went out, taking the empty bottles.

"I'd forgotten what beer tasted like."

"I hadn't," John said. "Up in the hut I used to think about it a lot."

"Well," I said, "we've got it now."

"You oughtn't to ever do anything too long."

"No. We were up there too long."

"Too d.a.m.n long," John said. "It's no good doing a thing too long."

The sun came through the open window and shone through the beer bottles on the table. The bottles were half full. There was a little froth on the beer in the bottles, not much because it was very cold. It collared up when you poured it into the tall gla.s.ses. I looked out of the open window at the white road. The trees beside the road were dusty. Beyond was a green field and a stream. There were trees along the stream and a mill with a water wheel. Through the open side of the mill I saw a long log and a saw in it rising and falling. No one seemed to be tending it. There were four crows walking in the green field. One crow sat in a tree watching. Outside on the porch the cook got off his chair and pa.s.sed into the hall that led back into the kitchen. Inside, the sunlight shone through the empty gla.s.ses on the table. John was leaning forward with his head on his arms.

Through the window I saw two men come up the front steps. They came into the drinking room. One was the bearded peasant in the high boots. The other was the s.e.xton. They sat down at the table under the window. The girl came in and stood by their table. The peasant did not seem to see her. He sat with his hands on the table. He wore his old army clothes. There were patches on the elbows.

"What will it be?" asked the s.e.xton. The peasant did not pay any attention.

"What will you drink?"

"Schnapps," the peasant said.

"And a quarter litre of red wine," the s.e.xton told the girl.

The girl brought the drinks and the peasant drank the schnapps. He looked out of the window. The s.e.xton watched him. John had his head forward on the table. He was asleep.

The innkeeper came in and went over to the table. He spoke in dialect and the s.e.xton answered him. The peasant looked out of the window. The innkeeper went out of the room. The peasant stood up. He took a folded ten-thousand-kronen note out of a leather pocketbook and unfolded it. The girl came up.

"Alles?" she asked.

"Alles," he said.

"Let me buy the wine," the s.e.xton said.

"Alles," the peasant repeated to the girl. She put her hand in the pocket of her ap.r.o.n, brought it out full of coins and counted out the change. The peasant went out the door. As soon as he was gone the innkeeper came into the room again and spoke to the s.e.xton. He sat down at the table. They talked in dialect. The s.e.xton was amused. The innkeeper was disgusted. The s.e.xton stood up from the table. He was a little man with a mustache. He leaned out of the window and looked up the road.

"There he goes in," he said.

"In the Lowen?"

"Ja."

They talked again and then the innkeeper came over to our table. The innkeeper was a tall man and old. He looked at John asleep.

"He's pretty tired."

"Yes, we were up early."

"Will you want to eat soon?"

"Anytime," I said. "What is there to eat?"

"Anything you want. The girl will bring the eating-card."

The girl brought the menu. John woke up. The menu was written in ink on a card and the card slipped into a wooden paddle.

"There's the Speisekarte Speisekarte," I said to John. He looked at it. He was still sleepy.

"Won't you have a drink with us?" I asked the innkeeper. He sat down. "Those peasants are beasts," said the innkeeper.

"We saw that one at a funeral coming into town."

"That was his wife."

"Oh."

"He's a beast. All these peasants are beasts."

"How do you mean?"

"You wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe what just happened about that one."

"Tell me."

"You wouldn't believe it." The innkeeper spoke to the s.e.xton. "Franz, come over here." The s.e.xton came, bringing his little bottle of wine and his gla.s.s.

"The gentlemen are just come down from the Wiesbadenerhutte Wiesbadenerhutte," the innkeeper said. We shook hands.

"What will you drink?" I asked.

"Nothing," Franz shook his finger.

"Another quarter litre?"

"All right."

"Do you understand dialect?" the innkeeper asked.

"No."

"What's it all about?" John asked.

"He's going to tell us about the peasant we saw filling the grave, coming into town."

"I can't understand it, anyway," John said. "It goes too fast for me."

"That peasant," the innkeeper said, "today he brought his wife in to be buried. She died last November."

"December," said the s.e.xton.

"That makes nothing. She died last December then, and he notified the commune."

"December eighteenth," said the s.e.xton.

"Anyway, he couldn't bring her over to be buried until the snow was gone."

"He lives on the other side of the Paznaun," said the s.e.xton. "But he belongs to this parish."

"He couldn't bring her out at all?" I asked.

"No. He can only come, from where he lives, on skis until the snow melts. So today he brought her in to be buried and the priest, when he looked at her face, didn't want to bury her. You go on and tell it," he said to the s.e.xton. "Speak German, not dialect."

"It was very funny with the priest," said the s.e.xton. "In the report to the commune she died of heart trouble. We knew she had heart trouble here. She used to faint in church sometimes. She did not come for a long time. She wasn't strong to climb. When the priest uncovered her face he asked Olz, 'Did your wife suffer much?' 'No,' said Olz. 'When I came in the house she was dead across the bed.'

"The priest looked at her again. He didn't like it.

" 'How did her face get that way?'

" 'I don't know,' Olz said.

" 'You'd better find out,' the priest said, and put the blanket back. Olz didn't say anything. The priest looked at him. Olz looked back at the priest. 'You want to know?'

" 'I must know,' the priest said."

"This is where it's good," the innkeeper said. "Listen to this. Go on Franz."