“Lucky birds,” I said.
“They are birds from the mountains. The old folks believe they bring good luck. Legend has it they carry our forefathers’ souls and should therefore be worshipped. But that’s all ancient superstition. Many of those customs fade away with time. Nowadays it’s mostly for the tourists.”
“Do you believe they bring luck?”
Maria crossed herself. “I believe in our Blessed Lord. But these people have been living here for generations. Life up here is different. Tougher. It makes you believe in your own things.”
Which didn’t exactly answer my question, I figured. A more marketable version of the truth. A rhetorical evasion. With all her purity, maybe there was more to that Maria than met the eye.
“Tell you the truth, I thought it was kinda creepy when all of them went wild at once.”
“Oh, they do that sometimes. They sense a change in the atmosphere, a break in the weather coming up. They set each other off and then all hell breaks loose. And what racket do they make! But it’s no big deal.”
And sometimes they fly out of your boyfriend’s face in Amsterdam, I thought. No big deal either.
Ramses appeared out of the bushes on the side of the house and settled in the old larch’s shadow, eyes half closed. Maria stopped sweeping and looked at him the way someone would look at a very sick opossum.
“You brought a cat.” Maria, she stood the broom against the wall and brushed the hair off her face. “I wouldn’t let him out. We’re not too keen on cats in the village.”
I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but Maria’s barrage dried up from one moment to the next. Mumbled something about having lots to do and hurried inside. Strange. A break in the weather. Call me paranoid, but I got the impression she’d said too much.
Maria didn’t stay long after that, but the rest of the time that she was there: cold fish. In the Jacuzzi bathroom downstairs, she said no to my self-brewed Arabian Death Wish. On the landing upstairs, I caught her mumbling to herself. Pretty sure it was a prayer.
Even when I asked her if Anton, Boy of the Alps, had a Heidi, she evaded me. Right, don’t lecture me on South European moms. Back to the drawing board.
Just before she left, Nick came back from his walk. I noticed he was looking better. Stronger. Arms, nose, and forehead bronzed by the October sun, gleaming with health. But you could see Maria was taken aback when she saw him.
He had an accident, I said. That’s why we’re here. To recuperate. Maria nodded politely, shook Nick’s hand, but she didn’t lift her nervous eyes from her bosom.
“This is Maria, Nick,” I said slowly, in French. “She comes from Grimentz. She does the cleaning.”
And Nick, spouting his full French repertoire: “Ah, oui. Bonjour!”
Maria couldn’t split fast enough. Snatched her bag from the kitchen table and—grudgingly, you could see—said, “Okay, I’ll be back next Friday.” Followed her out the door, Nick and me trailing behind her. He nudged me. Could I ask her what she knew about the mountains above the village. So I interpret.
At the bottom of the steps she turned, eyes gliding briefly over Nick’s face, grasped the rail, said to me, “I don’t know anything about the mountains.” Nervous laugh. “They’re pretty to look at, they dictate life down here, but nuh-uh. I like the valley. I know there’s a whole world up there, but it never appealed to me.”
“Has she heard of the Pointe Maudit?”
That name, even unarticulated, even muffled by bandages and smothered by Dutch, had its effect. Maria went pale and tottered. Impossible to define her expression. I wanted to ask if she was okay, but just then a Peugeot in obsidian black bumped over the wooden bridge crossing the creek and turned into our yard. It gave Maria the chance to hurry to her Nissan and step in without a good-bye.
Which was, like, totally unweird.
“Are we expecting visitors?” Nick asked.
Maria’s Nissan drove off in a cloud of dust, and the Peugeot parked in her ruts. Nick and me, together in the doorway, watching the car door open. Nick’s face in total confusion. A leather women’s boot stepped out of the Peugeot’s open door. Followed by tights. No runs. Full head of dark, curly hair.
What Nick saw coming up to him was a specter from his first days after the coma. A ghost from his delirium.
“Bonjour,” said Cécile Métrailler.
And I said, “Saprize.”
4
Turned out it wasn’t that hard to get Cécile here.
Two texts. Two texts was all it took to get her to leave Lausanne for the weekend and drive to the mountains. The first:
You were right too, he really is a monster. But he doesn’t do it on purpose.
The second:
Monster & Me are in CH. Wanna talk?
And what else? Turned out that the bar-slash-inn section of H?tel du Barrage wasn’t so bad after all. Sure, they didn’t serve any Captain Collinses or caipirinhas, there was no black light or backlight, but their Cardinal draft was pretty drinkable and there was a humongous fire in that humongous stone hearth that radiated an almost hypnotizing heat.
Cécile and I had a table all the way in the back. Cécile’s eyes, they didn’t let go of me for a single second. Leaning in over the woven tablecloth, she asked, “Did you know that no one in Wallis flies out for a code thirty-three eleven? It’s common knowledge between the rescue services. It’s a miracle Nick was saved, Sam.”
That’s what I call infiltration. The inn full of townsfolk, us the only outsiders. Pretending we belonged.
In the kitchen, the chef was singing Italian songs, so loud you could hear it in the dining room. The chef with his flapping white apron, serving the guests roasts from the spit: pork loin/jacket potatoes/Gruyère gratin/stewed apples. A chunky barwoman, dark fluff on her upper lip, brought foaming tankards of beer to the tables, or génépy to the fogeys smoking pipes around the fireplace. The smell of beer and tobacco embedded in the carpet and the beam-propped ceiling.
You’d almost miss it, but in the semidark above the bar, a birdcage. A big one. In it, something dark shuffling about.
Cécile looked at me and said, “A code thirty-three eleven is a missing person on the Maudit or in the mountains near what the locals call the Valley of Echoes. It’s always a missing person, because they’re never the ones who call. That’s why it was so surprising that Nick did.”
Cécile Métrailler had done some detective work. Dug up some hidden facts.
The reunion today went as well as could reasonably be expected. Five days in Switzerland and it was a major relief to see a familiar face. Cécile being here felt good. Cécile Métrailler, Nurse Cécile, the only beacon of hope those first days in the CHUV. Still, one step over the threshold, initial courtesies out of the way, and you could feel big stuff brewing.