And she called upon Vertigo to obey her. It was too humid for the Ice Maiden down in the meadows where the mint thrives. Vertigo stretched herself and came swimming up the river. Two of Vertigo’s sisters had come with her. Their family is a large one. The Ice Maiden chose the one who has power both inside and out of doors to help her. She is the one who can sit on the top of a flight of stairs or perch herself on the railing of a church tower. She is as agile as a squirrel and can tread air as a swimmer treads water. She tempts her victims to climb too high and then pushes them down into the abyss.
The Ice Maiden and Vertigo are like the polyp that lives in the sea: they grasp anything that comes within their reach; and now Vertigo was ordered to capture Rudy.
“I cannot catch him,” Vertigo answered. “I have already tried, but the cat has taught him his own tricks. Besides, that human child has a power of his own, he can push me away. I cannot reach him, even when he hangs from the topmost branches of the tree. If only I could tickle him under the soles of his feet or give him a ducking in the air, but I can’t.”
“We can do it!” shouted the Ice Maiden. “You and I together.”
“No! No!” came the answer, and it sounded like a mountain echo of the tolling of church bells, but it was a song. Other spirits of nature, those that are mild, loving, and good, had joined in a chorus, to have their say. They were the rays of the sun, its daughters, who when night comes retire to the highest mountaintops and there fold their rose-colored wings, which turn a deeper and deeper red as the sun sets.—Man sometimes calls that sight “rose of the evening.”—When the sun finally disappears its daughters sleep until their mother again rises above the horizon. The rays of the sun love flowers, butterflies, and human beings, and among the latter, they especially loved little Rudy.
“You will never catch him! You will never catch him!” they said.
“Bigger and stronger men have I caught and carried away!” replied the Ice Maiden.
Then the daughters of the sun sang a song about a wanderer in the mountains and how the whirlwind had robbed him of his cape. “The covering of the man, the wind could take and fly away with, but not the man himself. For man is powerful, more powerful even than we are. His spirit can soar even higher than our mother, the sun. He knows the magic words that make him master of both winds and sea, so that they are his servants and must obey him.” Theirs was a lovely song.
Every morning the sun rays shone through the only little window in Rudy’s grandfather’s house and rested on the sleeping child. The daughters of the sun kissed him, for they hoped to thaw and destroy that kiss of ice which the royal ruler of the glacier, the Ice Maiden, had pressed upon his forehead while he was lying in his dead mother’s lap, that time he fell into the crevasse in the glacier and was saved as if by a miracle.
CHAPTER TWO: JOURNEY TO A NEW HOME
When Rudy was eight years old, his uncle who lived in the Rhone Valley sent for him. Here the boy could get better schooling and, when he was grown, would have more opportunity for earning his living. His grandfather had to admit that this was true, and therefore he let the boy go.
It was the day that Rudy was to depart and there were many to say good-by to besides his grandfather. First of all there was the old dog, Ajola.
“Your father was the postman and I was the post dog,” said Ajola. “We have climbed both up and down. I know the people and the dogs on the other side of the mountains. I am not in the habit of speaking, but now, when we shall not have the opportunity of talking with each other much longer, there is something I would like to say. I want to tell you a story. It is one I have given much thought to; I don’t understand it and you probably won’t either. Not that it matters whether we understand it or not, but it has set me to thinking that everything is not right, either among men or among dogs.
“Once I saw a puppy that was traveling by stagecoach. It had a seat for itself like a regular passenger. Its mistress—whether she was a lady or a maid, I cannot tell—had taken a little bottle of milk along for the dog to suck on. She offered the puppy cake, but it only sniffed at the cake and wouldn’t eat it; then the woman ate it herself. I was running along beside the coach. It was spring and the road was filled with mud. I was hungry—hungry as only a dog can be. I saw it, and I have thought about it since, and somehow I do not think it’s right. I hope that someday you will be able to drive in your own carriage, little Rudy. They tell me that such things are up to yourself. I am not sure. I have never been able to, no matter how loud I barked.”
That was Ajola’s speech. Rudy kissed the old dog on the wet tip of his nose, then he picked the cat up in his arms, but cats don’t like to be carried.
“You are getting too strong, don’t squeeze me. You know that I will never use my claws against you. Go and climb over the mountains; haven’t I taught you how to climb? Believe that you can’t fall, and you won’t.” And the cat ran away before Rudy could see the look of sorrow in its eyes.
His grandfather’s two hens were running about at Rudy’s feet. One of them had lost its tail. It had been shot off by a tourist who had mistaken it for an eagle.
“Rudy is going across the mountains,” said one of the hens.
“He is always in a hurry,” said the other. “I cannot bear saying good-by, I am too sensitive.” And both the hens scurried outside to look for something to eat.
Rudy said good-by to the goats, and their braying sounded melancholy and sad.
Two of the guides from the district who were going across the mountains took Rudy with them. It was a long march for so small a boy, but Rudy was strong and his courage was tireless.
The swallows flew above him during the first part of the journey. “You and we! You and we!” they sang. The road led across the Lütschine River, which emerges as several small streams from the dark caves of the Grindelwald glacier. The only bridge across the raging waters were steppingstones and fallen trees, which had been carried downstream by the river and now were locked among the rocks.
Near a thicket of alders they began to ascend the side of the mountain, then, when it seemed safe, they walked out on the glacier itself. Sometimes they climbed over the great blocks of ice and sometimes they encircled them. Sometimes they crawled and sometimes they walked. Rudy’s eyes shone with delight and he strode forward, stepping so hard that his boots with the iron taps on his heels made marks in the ice, leaving a trail behind him.
Black earth, which had been carried and deposited by the water coming from the melted snow higher up the mountains, covered much of the surface of the glacier, but here and there its blue-green glasslike ice shone through. There were little pools among the ice packs that one had to skirt. At one point Rudy and his companions saw a big boulder that was tottering at the edge of an ice sheet suddenly break loose, roll, and fall into a crevasse in the ice. They heard the echo come from the dark tunnels of the glacier as it continued its descent.
Upward, ever upward they went. The glacier seemed to be trying to stretch itself as high as the mountain peaks, a wild frozen river with towers of ice caught between craggy cliffs. Rudy remembered what he had been told about how he and his mother had been down at the bottom of one of the frost-breathing crevasses. But the story was no more real to him than so many other stories that he had been told, and he soon stopped thinking about it. When the men thought that the climb was getting particularly difficult, one of them would stretch out his hand to help Rudy. But the boy was not tired and he ran across the slippery ice like a mountain goat.
Soon they were walking among barren rocks, then they reached low, wind-swept forest; next they came to a green pasture. The landscape was ever changing, always different, except for its sentinels, the great snow-covered peaks, which Rudy—like all the other children of the district—knew by name: “The Maiden,” “The Monk,” and “Eiger.” Rudy had never before been up so high, never before set foot on that sea of snow with its immobile waves that the wind sweeps across, raising only the fine powder of the s
urface, as it blows foam on a turbulent ocean. Up here the glaciers hold hands—if one may say that of glaciers—each one of them a palace for the Ice Maiden, whose power and pleasure it is to imprison and bury all.
The sun was hot and the snow blinding to look at, as if it had just been sown with blue-white, glittering diamonds. Innumerable insects, bees, and butterflies had been brought up here by the wind and now lay dead on the snow. Around the top of Mount Wetterhorn rested a dark cloud; it looked as if it were a wad of black cotton. Hidden inside it was a foehn wind, which could spread terror if it were let loose.
Rudy never forgot that day’s journey, or the scene high up there at dusk, with a view of the road he had yet to travel and the deep ravines made by water rushing down the mountains for so many thousands of years that it made one feel lost just to think about how many there must have been.
On the other side of the ocean of snow an abandoned stone building was their shelter for the night. Here they found charcoal and kindling. The men lighted a fire and sat down before it to smoke and drink hot spiced wine. Rudy was given his share of the wine, and he listened to the men, who were talking of the mysteries and secrets of the Alps. They told of the great snakes that lived in the deep lakes, of the gypsies, of ghosts who carried sleeping travelers through the air to a strange floating city called Venice. Then they began to talk about the strange, wild shepherd who drove his black sheep across the pastures at night. Many, though they had not seen him, had heard the sheep bells and the ghostly bleating of the ram. While the men spoke, Rudy listened with curiosity but not fear—for he was frightened of nothing—and in the distance he thought he did hear a hollow, weird animal cry. It became clearer and clearer. The men grew silent; they had heard it too. They warned Rudy that he must not fall asleep.
It was the foehn wind that was speaking: that tempest that casts itself from the mountain peaks down into the valleys with such force that it can snap full-grown trees as if they were reeds, and move houses as if they were pawns in a chess game.
The storm lasted only an hour, then the men told Rudy that he could close his eyes. The boy was so tired that he fell asleep at their command.
Early the next morning they broke camp. The sun now shone on new fields of ice, new glaciers, and new mountains, whose names Rudy did not know. They had entered the canton of Valais on the other side of the mountains and great snow peaks lay between them and Grindelwald; still they had far to go before Rudy would reach his new home, a long journey through valleys, forests, and meadows. Rudy looked eagerly at everything.
As the travelers approached, people came rushing out of their houses to stare at them. Rudy had never seen such strange-looking folk before. They all seemed to be deformed. They were disgustingly fat; below their pale, sallow faces, their yellow flesh sagged in rolls. Their eyes were vacant and told of their stupidity. They were Cretins. The women seemed even more monstrous than the men.
“Are these the kind of people I will find in my new home?” Rudy thought.
CHAPTER THREE: RUDY’S UNCLE
Happily, the people who lived in Rudy’s uncle’s house looked like the kind of human beings whom Rudy was used to seeing. All of them, that is, except one. Here, too, was one of those poor silly creatures whom you find in the canton of Valais, clothed in loneliness and poverty, whose lot it is to spend a few months of each year with different members of the family. Just at the time when Rudy came, it was his uncle’s turn to house and feed poor Saperli.
Rudy’s uncle was still a mighty hunter, and besides, he was skilled in barrelmaking. His wife was a tiny, lively woman with a birdlike face. She had the eyes of an eagle and a long neck that was covered with fine hair like down.
Everything was new to Rudy: clothes, habits, and even the language; but a child’s ear picks things up easily and he soon would learn to understand it. Rudy’s uncle seemed rich in comparison to his grandfather. The rooms in the house were large and the walls were covered with polished guns and the horns of chamois that Rudy’s uncle had killed. Over the entrance was a picture of the Blessed Mother. Beneath it a little lamp burned and there was a bouquet of rhododendron.
Rudy’s uncle was known not only as the best hunter of the chamois in the district but also as the most experienced and trusted guide. In his house Rudy was now to be the favorite, the one whom the grownups spoiled a little. True, he had a rival: an old hunting dog, useless now but honored and petted for all the use he had once been. Everyone remembered and talked about his former feats, and that is why he was treated like a member of the family who was entitled to spend his old age in leisure. Rudy tried to be friendly and pet the dog, but it did not respond to strangers. Rudy did not remain a stranger long; he soon grew roots in house and heart.
“Life is not so bad in the canton of Valais,” his uncle said. “We still have the chamois, and that won’t die out as the mountain goat did. Things are much better now than they were—though you’ll hear a lot of boasting about the ‘good old times.’ There is a hole in the sack now. There is fresh air in the valleys; we are not as closed in as we used to be. The new bud is always better than the fallen leaf.”
Sometimes Rudy’s uncle was very talkative. Then he would tell of his childhood, of the time when his own father was in his prime, when the canton of Valais was “closed tight as a sack” that was full of many unpleasant things, among them the poor unfortunate Cretins.
“When the Frenchmen came, they killed many people, but they killed the sickness as well. Oh, the French can fight in more ways than one. They fought the mountains, the rocks were forced to give up; we have a road across the Simplon. I can say to a three-year-old child, ‘Go to Italy.’ And if he keeps to the road he will get there.…Frenchwomen are good at fighting too.” Rudy’s uncle laughed and nodded toward his wife, who had been born in France; then he sang a French song and shouted hip-hip-hurrah for Napoleon Bonaparte.
This was the first time that Rudy had heard of France and of the great town on the Rhone River, called Lyon, which his uncle had once visited.
“It won’t be long before the boy becomes a good hunter. He has a natural bent for it,” Rudy’s uncle said more than once, as he taught the boy how to hold a rifle, take aim, and shoot.
During the hunting season he took him up in the mountains and gave him the blood of chamois to drink, for Swiss hunters and guides believe this is an antidote against vertigo. He taught him how to judge when an avalanche would take place—whether it would happen in the morning or the evening—by observing the conditions of the snow and the strength of the sun. He told Rudy to take the chamois as teacher in the art of climbing, to watch how it could leap and land on its feet without sliding. He explained what he should do when there was no foothold on the face of a cliff: how he could hold onto the rock with his elbows or use the muscles of his legs and thighs—even his neck—to prevent himself from falling.
The chamois are clever; they even post guards to tell the flock when a hunter is approaching. The hunter must be cleverer; he must walk against the wind so that the animal cannot pick up his scent. Sometimes Rudy’s uncle would fool the chamois by hanging his hat and his tunic on a cane. The chamois, mistaking the clothing for the hunter, would expect an attack from the wrong direction.
One day Rudy and his uncle were out hunting. His uncle had spied a chamois on the side of a mountain. The snow was wet and slippery. The path along the face of the cliff was so narrow that it soon disappeared and became only a thin ledge above a deep abyss, so he lay down and crawled.
Rudy was standing on more solid ground, about a hundred feet below him. Suddenly the boy saw a vulture, the kind that can take a half-grown sheep and fly away with it; it was circling in the air above Rudy’s uncle. The boy knew what it intended to do. Any moment it would sweep down on the man and with its wings hurl him into the valley, where it could later feed on his corpse. Rudy’s uncle had eye only for the chamois, which could be seen running with its kid. Rudy took aim and was about to shoot the vulture. Just
at that moment the chamois leaped up to the ridge of the cliff. Rudy’s uncle fired and the antelope was dead. The kid fled; all its life had been spent in training for this moment of flight. The echo from the shot frightened the vulture and it flew away. Rudy’s uncle did not know about the danger he had been in until he was told about it later by Rudy.
As they were returning home in high spirits—Rudy’s uncle whistling a tune from his childhood—they heard a terrifying but familiar noise coming from not far away. They looked about them and then they looked upward. There above them they saw a part of the snow field being lifted as if it were a linen tablecloth that the wind had caught. It snapped in two, like a gigantic slab of marble breaking. Stones, snow, and ice tumbled down the mountainside. There was a sound like a thunderclap. It was an avalanche! They would not be buried by it, but it would pass much too near them.
“Hold on, Rudy!” his uncle screamed. “Hold on with all your might!”
Rudy threw his arms around the trunk of a tree, while his uncle climbed up into the branches above him. The landslide passed several yards away from them, but the turbulence caused winds of such strength that trunks and branches of trees were broken as if they were dry reeds. Rudy lay pressed to the ground. The tree trunk that he held onto was now a stump, as if it had been sawed in half. The wind had broken off the crown and thrown it a distance away. There among the splintered branches lay his uncle. The man’s head was smashed, his face was unrecognizable, although his hand holding onto the branch was still warm. Pale and trembling, Rudy looked at him; this was the first time the boy had become acquainted with fear, the first time he had experienced horror.