by
Tala Bar
I
They had been climbing the Alpine pass for hours, traveling through the recently cleared snow piled up a meter high on both sides of the narrow road. Everywhere the Alps had loomed in their magnificence, only a few late skiers dotting the partially white slopes; gradually, the valleys and lakes drew further away below them, the houses grew smaller and the toy cows in the meadows tinier. At last, they had all vanished when the travelers finally reached the summit, and the car stopped.
Ella looked around her, curiously. The Alpine peaks were now at eye-level, their snowy tops rolling all round the little car and its two occupants. It was late afternoon, and the pale, westerly sun hung listlessly over the cold, empty desert; dead-white stretches of snow mingled at the distance with the hazy sky to form a horizonless blur. They were miles above any human settlement, the desolation of the place was overwhelming. One thing only broke the monotony: the blue mass of the glacier which, according to the map, was the source of the river Rhone, lay in the lap of the curvy white peaks, glittering under the sinking sun like a myriad of diamonds.
Then, for a few moments, Ella's thoughts were thrown back, as she wondered how they had come to be at the top of the Alps.
***
She had been feeling restless. She had finished her Master's exams at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, had handed in her thesis about the comparison between ancient Egyptian and Native American mythologies; and before it was finally approved, she had already been appointed a junior tutor at the Department of Anthropology. She was settled, fulfilling her obligations, feeling free - and restless, as if something exciting was missing from her life. Yes, she thought, she needed a new challenge - but what?
She was over thirty years old, 'and not getting any younger;' although she had never given it much thought, most people would naturally turn to the question, 'But what about children?' No, she did not think about it in the plural, but the need for the experience of motherhood had awakened, and now she was unable to suppress it again.
Though not married, Ella and Alex were settled in their way of life together. So much so, that any change would require a revolution. Ella thought she would have to circumnavigate around the question to get to her goal.
"Alex," she opened one night, when they were comfortably settling to sleep after lovemaking, "what would you do if I got pregnant?"
He turned on his side and stared at her. "You don't mean that!" he sounded fairly alarmed; then he turned to lie on his back, his eyes gazing at the ceiling. "Don't you think we are careful enough?" he asked, seemingly careless.
"Yes, but accidents can happen."
Silence fell. After a while, he said, "If it happens, I shall disappear."
"What?" she looked at him, genuinely surprised, not believing. "You don't mean that!"
"Yes, I do." His voice was freezing cold.
"Wouldn't you want to get to know a child of yours?" she wondered.
"No . I wouldn't want to admit such a person existed." He still did not look at her.
"But why?" She was stunned, not expecting such an answer.
"I can't take this kind of responsibility," his voice was very low, almost a whisper, and she wondered if he was getting hysterical; "to take care of someone else - that's beyond anything I would care to do."
"Don't you ever want to get married?"
"No, never! You should know that by now, Ella." His voice was soft, as if compensating for the harsh words.
Ella lay on her side leaning on her elbow, her head resting on her palm, her eyes gazing at him as if she had never seen him before. He was still not looking at her but at an undefined distance, something that was not really there - beyond the ceiling, beyond their bedroom and anything that was happening there. Denuded of glasses, his gray eyes had assumed a misty , vague expression.
"You see, Ella, you are all right, you can take care of yourself and I don't have to worry about you; but I'll not take on a commitment I feel unable to fulfill."
"But Alex," she argued, "you take quite a number of commitments at work, you are in a responsible position there , aren't you."
"That's different; it is not personal, and I am not responsible for other people's lives there. I know what marriage means, and I know what it means to have children, and I am not going to have it."
She was silent now. This was very final and she knew there was no point arguing. He turned his back to her now, and soon fell asleep, as if he had solved all his problems. She continued to lie awake for a long time afterwards, looking bleakly at her
uncertainties.
Alex was not a light-headed person, and he was not known to change his mind very easily; on the other hand, a final break between them was not what she wanted. She cared about him now more than she had done when she moved in with him ; but the confusion created in her heart by his strongly negative reaction to her proposal was not easy to overcome. The choice seemed unpleasant: either to keep her love with no hope for fulfillment in the natural way, or risking losing it altogether while accomplishing a normal female function.
'But perhaps,' she thought, 'this new yearning for a child is nothing more than a perfect animal instinct, which an enlightened person must be able to live without?' What was so important in bringing a child into a world which was so full of trouble and predicaments, with overpopulation and endless wars... This wish to fulfill her feminine destiny seemed to her suddenly as something obnoxious to which she must not submit -
she, who had been sorry for being a woman in this masculine world, in which she was prevented from attaining so many natural privileges!... Still, she felt this was not an abstract wish , but a basic natural physical need - one might say, hormonal - which had nothing to do with abstract ideas... The instinctive need to pass on the genes from which she herself had been made , to continue the existence of her own character...
Surreptitiously, Ella giggled. How ridiculous to speak of genes, which were themselves nothing but an invisible, abstract concept!
The trouble, of course, was that to accomplish this natural instinctive need she depended on the act of a man. Not necessarily Alex; but it was Alex whom she desired, with whom she wished to continue to live. She was unable at that moment to think of any other man. Certainly not for such a focused goal as producing a child. If not for love - it would better not be at all.
In this way she pondered and meditated, walking about half submerged in her dream while going on working and fulfilling her normal daily tasks with a mind detached; she talked to people without realizing what she was saying, even made love to Alex without being there altogether in her mind. And perhaps because of that detachment, because of a simple inattention to details that which could happen anywhere anywhen to anyone did happened . An accident. After two months missing her period, she went to see the doctor and received the positive answer. "The Goddess looks after her own," she murmured to herself, surprised by the mere act of referring to any divine being.
It was then the idea came into her mind, and she approached Alex with the words, "Listen, Alex, I've been thinking . University term ends soon. What do you think about going away on a holiday."
"Now? Isn't it a little too early?"
"June is summer, and it's already hot enough. Anyway, we'll go before the summer rush and it's a good time to travel . What do you say? Can you get off? "
"I can get off any time," he assured her, "I don't think there's a problem there. But we'll come back to the full heat of summer. Are you sure that's what you want?"
"Yes, I feel restless, I want to get away."
"And where would you like to go this time?" They have been through half of Europe already.
"I'd like to go to Switzerland, to the Alps," Ella replied ; " I feel I need the sharp air to clear my mind."
"So, something has been bothering you; won't you tell me what it is?"
But she managed to dissuade him from asking more questions .
II
Facing the dead-white stretches of snow, Ella began feeling the cold, bitter and penetrating. She tightened up coat covering her body and searched around. No other car was seen as far as the eye could reach.
"Alex," she said, hesitantly.
"What?" He was not looking at her, and when she raised her eyes to him, she was surprised to see his gaze turning toward the blue glacier. There was something inscrutable in his face , and she could not understand his being so impressed - he was
never so impressed with anything.
"Alex," she repeated, "I'd like to tell you something." Maybe here, at this distance, detached from everything familiar, he would take things differently, he would look at them from another angle.
"Not now, Ella," he said, "not now." She could not understand the impatience in his voice. Suddenly, the silent atmosphere had turned into a whispering menace.
"Alex," taken with a sudden fear, her voice quivered, "I'd like to get down now, back to the valley. I'm not sure I like it here," she whispered.
"Why?" His face still turned toward the glacier, as if enchanted, attracted by something that was emanating from the blue, glittering lump . " It's you who wanted to come up here, although we could have enjoyed the scenery better from the foot of the mountains, or from the funicular," Alex remonstrated.
"I know I did; but I didn't know how it's going to be. All this solitude, this emptiness, like death... Everything is dead here, there's no life at all - this place gives me the creeps."
"But I like this place," he insisted, quietly; "the solitude, the emptiness - it looks like something I've been looking for all my life."
His strange behavior was beginning to frighten Ella, and she pulled at his sleeve; as usual, he was wearing his gray suit, as if going to the office and not on a trip of leisure.
But he paid no attention to her, talking as if to himself. "I want to go and see what's there," he said.
"Where? There is nothing there. You can't go - it's all snow and ice!"
"That blue glacier over there - I want to see it closely."
She looked at him in a stunned amazement, avoiding the sight of the glacier. He had never been a nature lover; he was 'doing ' Switzerland, as he had 'done' other parts of Europe, as a kind of obligation, an addition to the vast store of knowledge he possessed. Where had this peculiar interest sprung from all of a sudden?
"It's just the source of the Rhone River, the book says; what is there to see particularly?" She tried to be logical, rational, but it had no effect on him.
"I don't care about that," he replied, illogically; "I want to understand the glacier itself."
"But it's dangerous; there may be chasms under the snow," she argued; a tinge of hysteria crept into her voice and she tried to suppress it.
"So what?" She had never known him to take an unnecessary risk. "I'll just take my coat and get closer to the place, just for a minute."
"Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind?" The hysteria burst out with all its force.
"What's come over you? I've never seen you like that before!" She was whispering her shouts at him in such a loose, free manner she had never used before, as if a spring had recoiled inside her.
All her latest worries - her yearnings, his ignoring her needs, the secret pregnancy - all these flooded her entire being in the face of this new difficulty, acting on her as a whip, pushing her into expressions of fear, rage and frustration. 'He's always been such a level-headed man,' she thought in her panic; 'so rational, so unemotional! Why should he be like that now?' Everything she had liked about him - his quiet voice, the grayness of his appearance, his gray eyes and hair - even the light gray suit he was wearing, with the off-white shirt and dark gray tie, as if he was going to the office rather than journeying to the high Alps - all these things that had made up his whole personality seemed to have vanished under the sparkling blue aura of the glacier...
"Look," she pressed on, "it's almost evening; we must not stay here, in this desolate place, alone."
Alex was sitting still beside her. He had not moved, but his gray eyes reflected the blue aura emanating from the glacier. He seemed in a state of trance, as if his ears were tuned to a distant calling. From his distance past, pictures flickered in his mind, wrapped in the flickering blue aura of the glacier.
***
He was a small, pale child, roaming the great house on his own, unnoticed, invisible, like a ghost. It was always quiet in the big house, which stood in a rich quarter of a Belgian city. Alex's father was always missing, body and soul - either on business or on trips, absorbed in books or merely deep in thoughts, ignoring his young son as he would a disturbing but inevitable element.
His mother - a sickly woman, spending her days in her sickroom among her medicines and nurses - missing in her emotions, enwrapped in herself and hardly paying attention to the child and his needs. Sometimes he would peep into her room, to be driven away by her moaning, or by a harsh word from a strange nurse. He would escape, then, his soft heart wounded , his intelligent mind blaming himself as a lowly creature , unworthy of attention. He found refuge in his unsatiated curiosity, wandering through the big, rich house, learning about the world from pictures and artifacts. He taught himself to read, found enjoyment in the company of the hundreds of books in the library - adult books, reading which had made him grow up before he had had a chance to be a child.
He was not physically neglected, by any means; he had been put under the formal care of a series of nurses that came and went, some bad, others indifferent, who saw to his bodily needs and left his soul alone. The last of them was Anna - a simple, kindly soul to whom he clung as to a last resort. She was not very smart, could hardly read and write, but she loved him , treated him as her own son.
The first breakup occurred when the war broke. Alex's father, sensing the danger waiting for all European Jews, asked Anna to take Alex home with her , to pretend he was her son, until all was over. In his heart Alex was glad to be with her, to spend all his time in her company and under her tutelage; but his mind told him that he had been given away, discarded like a useless object. Nobody bothered to explain to such a small child the nature of danger he was being saved from, and he could not avoid feeling unwanted.
Still, with the love and care Anna had poured over him, he adjusted, accepted her family as his own, soon almost forgot his own parents. Anna got married, had a child of her own, and another, whom Alex regarded as his brother and sister. He never saw his parents again - they had been taken by the Nazis soon after his departure, never to return, all their wealth to no avail. When hearing about it, Anna said she would legally adopt him after the war. He was happy, had almost forgotten his previous , neglecting, family.
Then the war was over, and a strange man came from England , claiming to be his uncle; this man tore Alex away from his new, loving family, and brought him to another emotional desert... The uncle, his mother's brother, was not a bad man; only silent and reserved and much older than Alex's own parents. His wife had died, his son and daughter almost grown and did not find much interest in the queer little boy.
As before, Alex reverted to his old lonely self, brought himself up, looked after himself the best he could. But this time he had learned his lesson: never to tie himself up emotionally to anyone, at the risk of having the relations severed again . For the lack of use, suffocating behind a strong shield, his heart had gradually turned to stone. Not only he was guarding his feelings, afraid to be hurt - he no longer was able to be hurt, no longer had any feelings left to be hurt with...
III
Sitting next to Ella with his hands lying lightly on the steering wheel, Alex was quite oblivious to her thoughts and fears. His gaze was fixed, captivated, on that enormous blue lump of ice in the distance. Usually, as a scholar of history whose main interest were dry facts, he had no sense of the mysterious; somehow, that blue lump was beckoning to him in a way which he did not understand, but felt no need or will to resist.
The silence in the car stretched long and oppressive. Alex sat as if in a state of trance, his gray eyes reflecting the blue aura, his ears attuned to a distant calling. Ella started talking again, in a fast, soft, caressing tone, occasionally rising to the verge of screaming. Alex paid no attention to her. Unused to being ignored, Ella put her hand on his shoulder, as if trying to force him to stay; he shrugged it away. 'I can do whatever I want,' he thought, 'if only I put my mind to it. She is not going to stop me!'
She stopped talking at last, seeing no purpose in it. Then, as she was looking on, fascinated , Alex started to move in smooth, mechanical motions, as caught in a silky, unseen mesh. He turned to the back seat and picked up his coat, turned back, opened the car door and went outside. With his eyes fixed on the blue magic in the distance he shut the car's door, shrugged into his coat , and started walking without heeding Ella's desperate cries.
For a long time Ella sat in the car, looking after the gradually diminishing black speck on the face of the white stretches. He was moving westwards, and the last rays of the sun blinded Ella's eyes, making her blink, missing the moment when he vanished behind a fold in the ground. Then the sun touched the hazy peaks at the distance, slowly sinking, leaving behind it a long lasting multicolored twilight. Ella sat there, watching nothing, until evening wrapped the world in dusk and she sank into her seat, burying her face in her coat.
She waited, and waited, while evening slipped into night, hiding the glacier under its black blanket. Large, cold stars shone harshly in the sky, and the dull, pale snow lay like dead. A dull heavy stone lay in Ella's heart and at last, weary with intense emotions, she closed her eyes...
***
Eerie howling raised her from the deep slumber she had fallen into, piercing the night with strange yearning. Shivering from apprehension and from the cold, Ella groped in the dark. "Alex," she said, softly. There was no answer. She looked around, vaguely remembering what had happened. Outside, a waning moon hung over the pale peaks; in their lap, the glacier's aura glowed in a blue fire.
A light wind lifted the soft layer of snow, driving the flakes in a frenzy of a fanciful dance veiling the world. Primeval masks, white-painted faces, were dancing in a circle among the flakes. Red eyes glowed above mouths gaping like black holes, emitting blood-curdling howls. Pointed, red-tinted breasts protruded bellow the masks from the void of unseen bodies...
Terror gripped her heart, mingled with fascination. Held by the magic of the dance, Ella was horrified to notice a familiar figure in the midst of this frightful circle - Alex, dancing to its beating rhythm.
'He's come back, thank God!' was her first thought. It was soon discarded. He had not come back to her; he was immersed in a strange frolic among strange creatures, oblivious of her existence. 'Funny,' she thought' 'I've never considered his dancing so free and wild.' It was grotesque, it was terrible. Ella wanted to call out to him, but no voice came out of her throat; she wanted to get out of the car, but the handle was stuck...
The dance was changing shape; the circle opened, snaking around itself with Alex in the middle of the meandering row. One end then started to move away, the rest following behind. 'He's getting away, he's getting away and I shall never see him
again!' Ella cried in silence. The black, half-invisible horrors carried the suit-clad dancing man with them, vanished into the snowstorm toward the beckoning glacier.
For a long time Ella sat, stunned. Was it a dream, or had it really happened? She did not know, could not tell. Suddenly, she found her voice, started screaming, screaming into the emptiness. There was no one to hear her. She tried the door, the handle submitted easily and she got out of the car. The storm had died down, all was still, as if the world had held its breath. She looked around, saw nothing but pale peaks in a faint moonlight. She looked at the ground, expecting to see nothing, and was horrified to discover some traces, blurred marks of bare feet in the soft snow...
Ella shivered, her hair bristled. She realized it was very cold, got into the car thankful for a little warmth. Huddled in her coat, the only thing she was able to think of was that Alex had gone. Where, how - to that she had no answer. Would he come back? She was very doubtful. A feeling of desolation gripped her heart and cold tears sprang from her eyes. She grimaced to herself. All this restlessness she had been feeling lately - had it changed his attitude toward her? He had gone now, broken free from their life together - setting her free at the same time... Did she want to be free of him? Almost ashamed of the idea, she sank back into her seat...
The thoughts buzzed in her mind, weighing heavily on her heart. Her eyelids grew heavy, her head sunk to her chest and she fell into a fitful sleep, confused. The glacier's blue aura flickered fitfully like her sleep, bursting out with clumps of light, dying down, shining out again, until at last it started to dim, gradually.
IV
Ella woke up to a glittering bright day. The white, rolling peaks shone in the rising sun, shining a new feeling inside her. The emptiness around her seemed to be awakening to a new life, filling her heart with new energy and awareness. Alex had gone, she realized after a moment, but there was no reason for her to abandoned life; and there was that new life growing inside her, for which she had to make an effort to go on her own. Transferring herself to the driver's seat, she switched on the engine - 'How easily it's come to life!' she mused, putting her hands on the steering wheel...
Getting down the mountain was not an easy task, but it had to be accomplished. Some time after noon, Ella drove into a small hamlet at the foot of the mountain, collapsing at the wheel after she had stopped the car at the center of the village.
"He's gone, I don't know where," she murmured to the villagers, curiously gathering around her. A sole woman coming down the mountain was not a usual sight.
She was led to the tiny police station and told the two men manning it what had happened. While a connection was being made with the main town, and a posse organized to go up the mountain to search for the lost man, the women surrounded Ella, supplying her with hot coffee laced with brandy.
"There is something in that glacier, something strange, you know," they said to her, comforting her while nodding their heads in understanding. "People have vanished there before, you know; there is something mysterious in that glacier, which can be quite dangerous..."
***
Alex was never found. Leaving the rented car behind, Ella ordered a taxi to take her to the airport, and flew back home to Jerusalem. For many days her mind was empty of thought, with only one idea circling on and on in it. She had her child to take care of, there was nothing else at all in the world for her.
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