“Summer’s always two months late in the mountains. It’s bad, Marlow. He says it’s a yard deep above the three thousand feet mark. He tells me they’ve had snow ploughs out on the roads, but that some of the villages higher up are still cut off. It’s been freezing hard at night and all the snow isn’t down yet. There’s been no sun either to thaw what is down.” He looked at the leaden sky. “That lot’ll probably come down to-night. It’s the devil’s own luck.”
“Three thousand feet’s a long way up.”
“When you start from sea level, yes. But round about Fusine it’s over four thousand. Even if we stuck to the main road across the frontier we’d still be above the snow line. But we can’t even do that. We’ve got to keep away from the road and that means going higher still. If the weather was good the walk would give us a nice appetite for breakfast to-morrow, but with a heavy fall of snow on the mountains and more on the way, we’ll be in a mess.”
“A little snow won’t hurt us, surely.”
He snorted. “A little snow! We’re not in England now. Have you ever been in the mountains when it’s snowing?”
“No.”
“Well, then, don’t talk out of the back of your neck. It wouldn’t be a picnic if we could follow the road. Off the road it’ll be blue murder. And another thing. You see those clouds? Well, if it doesn’t snow to-night we’re going to be trying to find our way through them.”
“Well, what do you propose?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. I’m darned if I know. If there was a train back to Udine to-night I’d say we ought to take it. But the only train going back comes from across the frontier and they might be examining passports on the train. It might be O.K., but we can’t risk it. If we hide out in the open we shall get pneumonia. Even if we stay below the snow line it’ll be cold and wet with those clouds about.”
“Isn’t there a Turkish bath at Tarvisio?”
“Is that meant to be funny?” he snarled.
“Can’t we do as we did last night?”
“Tarvisio is not much more than an overgrown village. Everything’ll be shut by ten. They go to bed early in these parts.”
“Well, if we can’t go back and we can’t stay at Tarvisio, we shall have to go on. Is that it?”
He grunted. “There are times, Marlow, when that sort of logic is just damn silly.” He shrugged. “We’ll have to spend some money at Tarvisio.”
“What on?”
“Food and clothes. Wool caps to keep our ears warm, gloves, ski-ing gaiters to keep our ankles dry, an extra jersey apiece, woollen scarves, a bottle of rum and a better map than this one. I tried to pump that guy about routes. Naturally, I couldn’t say any more than that we wanted some nice walks, but I did get out of him that there’s an old disused road that runs over the frontier a few kilometres south of the motor road. Apparently it’s overgrown by trees now and little more than a path. He mentioned it to warn me. It seems that last summer four hikers wandered out along it, got on to the wrong side of the frontier by mistake and were fired at by the Yugo-Slav frontier guards. That’s the path we’ll make for.”
“I’ve always wanted to be fired at by a Yugo-Slav frontier guard.”
“Don’t be a sap! It’ll be dark. Besides, it’s the Italians we’ve got to worry about and they…” He broke off. The door slid open and the farmer returned to his seat. For the rest of the journey I watched the clouds in silence.
Shortly after six o’clock we left Tarvisio along a secondary road running south of Fusine.
Almost immediately we found ourselves climbing. The road was cut in a series of diagonals across the face of a range of grey stone hills. Below us the ash trees and pines grew against the hill-side like the quills on a porcupine. Through the dense mist that drifted down into the valley below I caught occasional glimpses of snow on the sides of the cloud-capped heights ahead. There was no wind, but it was bitterly cold. The air had an astringent quality about it that made the skin of my face tingle. There was an almost heady smell of pine resin. But for the cold I should have felt sleepy earlier than I did. It was not until nearly eight o’clock that we came upon the first traces of snow.
Shortly before we drew level with Fusine the road curled away to the left and we struck off up the hill-side to the right of us.
According to Zaleshoff’s map and compass we were heading for the path mentioned by the farmer. We should, he had calculated, reach it before dark. For a time we climbed steadily through a dense pine forest, through which the mists drifted and curled like long eerie fingers searching absently for something lost. It was very still. Occasionally the loud, harsh croaking of mountain crows would break the silence. But that was all. The sound accentuated the silence. When we spoke it was in whispers. Then among the trees ahead of us we saw a patch of white.
The patches became more frequent. At first they were thin and looked, as our boots crunched across them, like granulated sugar. Then they grew thicker and merged one with another so that soon we could see nothing but white through the trees ahead. The air became colder.
Then, quite suddenly, we found ourselves fighting our way round a deep drift of snow that had accumulated in a small gully. Beyond the gully, however, it was nearly as deep. As I scrambled on I kept thinking that it would get easier when we were clear of that freakish drift; and yet somehow it never did get easier. It became more difficult. Now drift seemed to merge into drift. The snow was half-way up our thighs. It was a dry, cloying powder that dragged at the feet. Now the forest was full of sound, a rustling, secret sound as the dense roof of pine needles far above us shifted uneasily under the weight of snow, allowing it to hiss softly through the lower branches in chalky cascades. The mist had become thicker.
By a quarter to nine we got to the top of what appeared to be a long ridge. We were both of us breathless and Zaleshoff called a halt. Then, when he had got his breath back:
“We ought to be above Fusine and slightly beyond it-about here.” He jabbed the map. I did not bother to see where. “If we keep going level for a bit now we should strike the path where it tops the ridge. That is, if we can see it at all. If this damned mist would lift…”
We went on. In spite of the exertion of climbing, in spite of the two jerseys, I began to feel terribly cold. I could feel the snow, melted by the heat of my body, soaking through the thick woollen socks above the gaiters. The top of the ridge was rocky and we toiled through drifts of snow that came up to our waists. By this time, too, night was falling. The mist seemed to be closing in on us. I began to feel panicky.
As the light went the mist cleared. It seemed to dissolve into the shadows. At one moment it was all round us; thirty seconds later it had gone and we saw the lights of isolated cottages on the hillside far away down the valley. There were no stars. The night hung like a black fog overhead. A few minutes later it began to snow hard.
The top of the ridge was partly screened by trees, but the shelter they gave was negligible. The snow did not fall in flakes, but in great frozen chunks. There was a frightening savagery about it. There was no wind and it fell vertically: but when we moved forward it beat against our faces with stinging force. Our arms shielding our faces, we blundered on a few steps at a time, pausing in between for breath.
We must have gone on for twenty minutes like that before we felt the ridge begin to dip slightly. Zaleshoff grasped my arm.
“We’re getting near the path now,” he panted; “keep your eyes open for it.”
But that was easier said than done. I had long ago thrown away my spectacles. Now I wished that I had kept them. The strain of trying to peer through screwed-up eyes into the darkness beyond the streaming white mass in front of us was almost unbearable. The ridge dipped and rose again and still we had not found the path. My legs were beginning to feel leaden. We went on for another ten minutes. Then I stopped. Zaleshoff was a few paces ahead of me. I called out to him and he turned back.
“What is it?”
I waited to get my breath. “Zaleshoff,” I said at last, “we’re lost.”
For a moment he did not move. Then I saw him nod. For a minute we stood there in silence, the snow hissing through the trees and beating down on us. I remember that it had piled up on my shoulders so that if I bent my head sideways I could touch it with my cheek. I had begun to shiver.
“Let’s have a drink,” he said, “it’s in my rucksack.”
