Authors: Diane Johnson
She was also glad no one here would know how well she was fixed. Though she was delighted with her money, it embarrassed her too; it had led to a modest celebrity in Palo Alto, and even to an extent in San Francisco, and she would not want here that odd sensation of being recognized even in a restaurant she’d never been to before.
Valméri itself was a conglomeration of chalets, luxurious hotels, cable cars, and Poma lifts slung across a narrow valley below Alpine peaks of stupefying grandeur. The architecture of local ski stations varied from the harsh rectilinear buildings of the International style to the kitschy pseudo-Swiss, which was the preferred, more expensive, and best-appointed option; Valméri was in the Swiss style, built by the English in the nineteen-thirties.
Amy and the baron stamped into the ski room, where
the ski attendant was listening, frowning, into the telephone, and other skiers, ranged along the benches taking their boots off, seemed to be waiting in silence for some announcement from the television set in the corner. The rescuers being interviewed on television had an air of slightly self-conscious heroism, knowing their own lives to be endangered by the still unstable snow conditions and ongoing snowfall. Men in red parkas stood beside helicopters and patted Rottweilers on leashes. In other valleys, during this disastrous week, fourteen Austrians were known to be dead, an unknown number of Swiss, three in France so far, and thousands of tourists were expected to be pinned in the Austrian Alps by the weather conditions and blocked roads.
Amy waited politely until a Russian lady extricated her feet with a grateful sigh from her enormous orange boots and carried them off to the warming rack. The baron was now leaning in with the ski attendant at the telephone as if news would come with volume audible to bystanders. The atmosphere in the ski room, Amy now saw, was one of attending a collective fate, as at a soccer match. A flush of wonder and happiness filled her when she thought of the dreadful weather and the wonderful acts of community Europeans were capable of, with their evolved, socialized governments and sense of noblesse oblige – not that she wanted socialism in America. But she admired all these trilingual people hushed in their concern about the fate of motorists on the road to Valméri, though of course Americans in the same circumstances would be concerned too.
‘They are afraid the road will collapse the other side of
Les Menuires,’ said the ski man finally. Amy looked back outside but the sky was calm slate, against which thick distinct flakes gathered their numbers and danced off in a mounting wind without seeming to land on the already deep snowbanks.
‘Is the storm worse? Is there something to do?’ she asked the baron.
‘No, no, there are road crews. But I have to get to Paris tonight on the six o’clock train.’ He frowned. Gallic shrug from the ski attendant, who called the baron ‘Otto.’ There was a general discussion of the condition of the local roads, making Amy feel amazingly lucky to be safely here.
Now the face of the young hotel manager, Christian Jaffe, appeared at the door. Something in his expression added to the hushed mood of expectancy that today replaced the ebullience with which skiers normally came in, pleased to have survived another day, high colored from the cold and exertion, laughing. Jaffe’s pale face struck the others as it did Amy, as something luminous and portentous, his indoor pallor startling next to the bronzed cheeks of the skiers. Perhaps it was also the slightly mortuary effect of his business suit among the parrot-colored ski garments, yellow or red or blue, or in Amy’s case pale silver-gray.
Talk fell off, but when Jaffe didn’t see whom he was looking for, he ducked out again and the talk rose up, questions about the weather, something needing tightening, a boot problem, a cacophony of languages. The hill was closed now, lifts shut down, and there were rumors of other avalanches in the adjoining valley of Méribel. Skiers stood in their boots in the lower lobby outside the ski
room watching through the windows as the snow continued to fall. Two Russian girls spoke an odd, thick English to the ski man, English being the only language they had in common with him, in wheedling tones, cajoling a better forecast for tomorrow. Thinking of the baron, whom she had found out was Austrian, Amy resolved that after she learned French she would go on to German. A language related to English, how hard could it be?
2
The rumor had reached the Hôtel Croix St Bernard from its origins with an Italian ski patrolman assisting in the avalanche rescue efforts, that the new cataclysm today had been triggered by the vibrations from low-flying American warplanes on their way to refuel in Germany, presumably to do with the ongoing overflights of the Middle East, bombings of some unlucky Balkan country, or another of the numberless adventures the surly superpower was conducting. Such an airplane theory seemed plausible. Vapor trails were often seen to mar the sky above the snowy crags and silent peaks of Valméri, the noise sometimes catching in the canyons and reverberating like dynamite all the way to the lowest valley. The physics of vibration, intensely studied by the snow seismologists, without enhancing their ability to predict the action of a given snowfield, were perfectly consistent with this rumor. Skiers were often enjoined to silence as they traversed a treacherous slope beneath a fragile cornice. If a whispering skier could unsettle tons of snow, how much more could powerful jet engines? The planes were the major topic of conversation in the lobby, along with the rumor that a family staying at this very hotel had been among today’s victims.
As was the custom every Sunday, the management had invited all the guests for a glass of champagne before
dinner. Amy, veteran of numerous compulsory corporate seminars on dressing for the message, had long ago conquered any concern about what to wear to cocktail parties; she had put on black pants and a blouse that she thought neither seductive nor dowdy, and brushed and rebraided her hair. She was reluctant to appear, by making too much effort, as if she was looking for men, since emphatically she wasn’t; on the other hand, attention to appearance was a desirable form of social cooperation, a subject that interested her intensely in the abstract.
Drinks were served in the lobby, from a long table covered with a white cloth or by waiters from the dining room walking among the guests with little trays. A hot fire in the large fireplace drove people from its immediate vicinity to cluster nearer the door, where the owner, Chef Jaffe, and Madame Jaffe in her Tyrolean-style suit of loden-green, greeted and chatted, helping the guests to get to know each other, and trying to deal with anxious questions regarding avalanches.
This was the first general social occasion of the new week, so most people didn’t know each other, and stood with expectant, cooperative smiles. Amy looked around. One or two little old ladies glowed with diamonds, making her think of cat-burglar movies. Over there, a very heavy Russian wife was astoundingly bemedalled, decorations up and down her bosom. Amy had her usual sense of cocktail party hopefulness, knowing intellectually that the room would be as full of fools and bores as any party, but always with the belief that among these particular people some would be worldly, kindly, and friendly, and that kindred spirits would emerge. Why wouldn’t they? She struggled to
suppress a surge of love for them – not these particular people, but for the powers of human organization, our gregarious natures, the kindliness of our impulses to share food and talk to each other, the sweetness of agreeing to dress up for others. Sometimes she saw these activities as products of the struggle for power, as Darwin might have, or at least Herbert Spencer, but for tonight she was touched by the sight of humans wishing to be liked by others and to make them lovely things to eat.
She saw this cocktail party and parties in general as aspects of mutual aid, a subject of her passionate interest since high school, when she had joined the Mutual Aid Club, an extracurricular activity frankly designed to embellish the chances of getting into good colleges, in this case by taking pets, small children, and CD players to old persons’ homes to cheer the elderly residents. The faculty advisor was a Miss Steinway, and Miss Steinway had in her own youth come under the influence of the works of an old Russian anarchist, P. Kropotkin, whose idea was that contrary to the teaching of Darwin, the human species had progressed not through competition but through mutual aid; that this was true of other species, too, ants and baboons and all sorts of creatures; that whereas individuals might compete for food, successful species had insured survival by developing highly elaborate forms of cooperation, and that in imagining every being locked in a struggle for survival of the fittest, Darwin had it wrong or had been misinterpreted.
Amy had already decided that at the end of this European period of narcissistic self-improvement, she would establish and fund a foundation for propagating the ideas
of Prince Kropotkin. But that was eventually. For now, she accepted a soft-boiled egg – no, it was an eggshell filled with eggy custard, with caviar on top – and smiled around her.
‘Like Queen Victoria,’ a man said to her, with a kind of Kentucky accent, looking with her at the bemedalled Russian. She recognized him as the American who been in the van from Geneva with her. She had also seen him in the ski room, but he did not appear to ski. Anyhow, he would solve the other cocktail-party problem, whom to talk to, for one must not be standing by oneself, a rule he evidently also believed in, edging nearer. This man would do, attractive and open-looking. ‘Joe Daggart,’ he said.
She smiled at him. ‘I took an oath, coming over, not to talk to other Americans. Should I break it?’
‘What have you got against Americans?’ he asked.
‘Well, nothing, naturally. It’s just that I know them already,’ Amy said, noticing his glance at her shoes. ‘Since I am one, I want to meet other people. But I’ll count you as an other.’
He worked in Geneva, but often came here to stay, for the skiing and food. Companionably, they waded into the assortment of people, introduced themselves, smiled, agreed that the day had been unusual. It was disconcerting to notice that people switched into English when either she or Joe Daggart spoke, when they had been talking some other language to each other, but of course it was necessary, if she was to talk to them. Joe, she noted, could speak French. Her disadvantage strengthened her resolve to get to work on languages.
In general, everyone was nice, though there were one
or two moments that surprised, even daunted. ‘Isn’t it awful, so much smoking?’ she had said at one point in a low voice to Joe. ‘Why aren’t they all dead?’
‘It’s typical French bravado. Since Americans think it’s bad for you, the French have to show us what sissies we are.’ He spoke loudly enough that all could hear, and looked around him combatively.
A nearby woman took him up. ‘French cigarettes don’t cause cancer, you know. Cancer is caused by the additives put there by the American tobacco companies. This is well known, only of course the tobacco companies don’t allow this fact to be published in the United States.’
‘Really?’ Amy wondered, thinking that it could even be true.
The speaker was a glittering woman with dark auburn hair, wearing high heels with her narrow evening pants, and she introduced herself as Marie-France Chatigny-Dové. This conversation led directly to another faux pas on Amy’s part.
‘I think you are quite right, you two, to come in here as if nothing had happened. Of course it isn’t your fault,’ said Madame Chatigny-Dové presently.
Amy didn’t understand what she was talking about, and her blankness must have shown. ‘The perfidy of American tobacco companies?’
‘American planes yet again dropping things willy-nilly, not caring who might die on the ground,’ explained another woman, in a mid-European accent. ‘Quite an irony that one of the people buried in the snow actually was an American. I’m sure your pilots didn’t think of that beforehand.’
‘The avalanche,’ said someone else by way of explanation, seeing Amy’s baffled expression. Amy, somehow thinking they were joking, laughed good-naturedly. Her laughter produced an array of astonished expressions on every nearby face. Americans laughing at how they have killed innocent skiers! Yet again, they might have added, for no one had forgotten an Italian incident of some years before. The red-haired woman turned and hurried over to Baron Otto, as if appalled to be in the presence of someone as callous as Amy.
‘Mon Dieu,’
other people said. Amy quickly understood her gaffe; these people seriously believed U.S. airplanes had set off an avalanche.
‘It can’t be true,’ she protested. ‘No one who knows anything about physics could believe… I don’t believe it.’ It occurred to her that loud noises were routinely used to set off avalanches.
‘There have never been avalanches this early in the season. How else can you explain it?’
‘I saw them myself, saw the cornice tremble just after they came over.’
‘It can’t be true,’ Amy insisted, but people had moved on, turned away, withdrawn. She found that her heart was pounding irrationally. Why had she so stupidly laughed?
‘If we live over here long enough, finally we come to appreciate other Americans,’ said Joe Daggart at her elbow. ‘Our jokes, shared status of pariah.’
She turned to him gratefully, but what might have been a promising and instructive conversation was soon interrupted or augmented by the intrusion of another man, who now languidly strolled up to them. She had seen him
in the lobby and guessed correctly from his height, purplish cheeks, and shock of pinkish-white hair that he was British.
‘Robin Crumley,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help but overhear you speaking American. You know, divided from us by a common language.’
She tried to guess his age – late forties or even fifty. He wore a sort of sagging pinstripe suit, and had a high, slightly quavery voice. He had said he was a poet, or perhaps he had said ‘the poet,’ but it was hard to imagine him saying his poems in that voice. Crumley dismissed the unpleasant little moment that had just passed. ‘Pay no attention to them, my dear. For all his vaunted rationality, the Frenchman is a compendium of received opinions, unlikely to think for himself.’ Amy smiled gratefully at this assurance. ‘I know the Venns,’ he added. ‘Him, slightly, a terrible business. He is an Englishman.’