in the hotel was a buzz of tourists. alexander and hannele sat in the restaurant drinking hot coffee and milk, and watching the maidens in cotton frocks and aprons and bare arms, and the fair youths with maidenly necks and huge voracious boots, and the many jews of the wrong sort and the wrong shape. these jews were all being very austrian, in tyrol costume that didn’t sit on them, assuming the whole gesture and intonation of aristocratic austria, so that you might think they were austrian aristocrats, if you weren’t properly listening, or if you didn’t look twice. certainly they were lords of the alps, or at least lords of the alpine hotels this summer, let prejudice be what it might. jews of the wrong sort. and yet even they imparted a wholesome breath of sanity, disillusion, unsentimentality to the excited ‘bergheil’ atmosphere. their dark-eyed, sardonic presence seemed to say to the maidenly-necked mountain youths: ‘don’t sprout wings of the spirit too much, my dears.’
the rain had ceased. there was a wisp of sunshine from a grey sky. alexander left the knapsack, and the two went out into the air. before them lay the last level of the up-climb, the lammerboden. it was a rather gruesome hollow between the peaks, a last shallow valley about a mile long. at the end the enormous static stream of the glacier poured in from the blunt mountain-top of ice. the ice was dull, sullen-coloured, melted on the surface by the very hot summer: and so it seemed a huge, arrested, sodden flood, ending in a wave-wall of stone-speckled ice upon the valley bed of rocky débris. a gruesome descent of stone and blocks of rock, the little valley bed, with a river raving through. on the left rose the grey rock, but the glacier was there, sending down great paws of ice. it was like some great, deep-furred ice-bear lying spread upon the top heights, and reaching down terrible paws of ice into the valley: like some immense sky-bear fishing in the earth’s solid hollows from above. hepburn it just filled with terror. hannele too it scared, but it gave her a sense of ecstasy. some of the immense, furrowed paws of ice held down between the rock were vivid blue in colour, but of a frightening, poisonous blue, like crystal copper sulphate. most of the ice was a sullen, semi-translucent greeny grey.
the two set off to walk through the massy, desolate stone-bed, under rocks and over waters, to the main glacier. the flowers were even more beautiful on this last reach. particularly the dark harebells were large and almost black and ice-metallic: one could imagine they gave a dull ice-chink. and the grass of parnassus stood erect, white-veined big cups held terribly naked and open to their ice air.
from behind the great blunt summit of ice that blocked the distance at the end of the valley, a pale-grey, woolly mist or cloud was fusing up, exhaling huge, like some grey-dead aura into the sky, and covering the top of the glacier. all the way along the valley people were threading, strangely insignificant, among the grey dishevel of stone and rock, like insects. hannele and alexander went ahead quickly, along the tiring track.
‘are you glad now that you came?’ she said, looking at him triumphant.
‘very glad i came,’ he said. his eyes were dilated with excitement that was ordeal or mystic battle rather than the bergheil ecstasy. the curious vibration of his excitement made the scene strange, rather horrible to her. she too shuddered. but it still seemed to her to hold the key to all glamour and ecstasy, the great silent, living glacier. it seemed to her like a grand beast.
as they came near they saw the wall of ice: the glacier end, thick crusted and speckled with stone and dirt debris. from underneath, secret in stones, water rushed out. when they came quite near, they saw the great monster was sweating all over, trickles and rivulets of sweat running down his sides of pure, slush-translucent ice. there it was, the glacier, ending abruptly in the wall of ice under which they stood. near to, the ice was pure, but water-logged, all the surface rather rotten from the hot summer. it was sullenly translucent, and of a watery, darkish bluey-green colour. but near the earth it became again bright coloured, gleams of green like jade, gleams of blue like thin, pale sapphire, in little caverns above the wet stones where the walls trickled for ever.
alexander wanted to climb on to the glacier. it was his one desire — to stand upon it. so under the pellucid wet wall they toiled among rock upwards, to where the guide-track mounted the ice. several other people were before them — mere day tourists — and all uncertain about venturing any farther. for the ice-slope rose steep and slithery, pure, sun-locked, sweating ice. still, it was like a curved back. one could scramble on to it, and on up to the first level, like the flat on top of some huge paw.
there stood the little cluster of people, facing the uphill of sullen, pure, sodden-looking ice. they were all afraid: naturally. but being human, they all wanted to go beyond their fear. it was strange that the ice looked so pure, like flesh. not bright, because the surface was soft like a soft, deep epidermis. but pure ice away down to immense depths.
alexander, after some hesitation, began gingerly to try the ice. he was frightened of it. and he had no stick, and only smooth-soled boots. but he had a great desire to stand on the glacier. so, gingerly and shakily, he began to struggle a few steps up the pure slope. the ice was soft on the surface, he could kick his heel in it and get a little sideways grip. so, staggering and going sideways he got up a few yards, and was on the naked ice-slope.
immediately the youths and the fat man below began to tackle it too: also two maidens. for some time, however, alexander gingerly and scramblingly led the way. the slope of ice was steeper, and rounded, so that it was difficult to stand up in any way. sometimes he slipped, and was clinging with burnt finger-ends to the soft ice mass. then he tried throwing his coat down, and getting a foot-hold on that. then he went quite quickly by bending down and getting a little grip with his fingers, and going ridiculously as on four legs.
hannele watched from below, and saw the ridiculous exhibition, and was frightened and amused, but more frightened. and she kept calling, to the great joy of the austrians down below:
‘come back. do come back.’
but when he got on to his feet again he only waved his hand at her, half crossly, as she stood away down there in her blue frock. the other fellows with sticks and nail-boots had now taken heart and were scrambling like crabs past our hero, doing better than he.
he had come to a rift in the ice. he sat near the edge and looked down. clean, pure ice, fused with pale colour, and fused into intense copper-sulphate blue away down in the crack. it was not like crystal, but fused as one fuses a borax bead under a blow-flame. and keenly, wickedly blue in the depths of the crack.
he looked upwards. he had not half mounted the slope. so on he went, upon the huge body of the soft-fleshed ice, slanting his way sometimes on all fours, sometimes using his coat, usually hitting-in with the side of his heel. hannele down below was crying him to come back. but two other youths were now almost level with him.
so he struggled on till he was more or less over the brim. there he stood and looked at the ice. it came down from above in a great hollow world of ice. a world, a terrible place of hills and valleys and slopes, all motionless, all of ice. away above the grey mist-cloud was looming bigger. and near at hand were long, huge cracks, side by side, like gills in the ice. it would seem as if the ice breathed through these great ridged gills. one could look down into the series of gulfs, fearful depths, and the colour burning that acid, intense blue, intenser as the crack went deeper. and the crests of the open gills ridged and grouped pale blue above the crevices. it seemed as if the ice breathed there.
the wonder, the terror, and the bitterness of it. never a warm leaf to unfold, never a gesture of life to give off. a world sufficient unto itself in lifelessness, all this ice.
he turned to go down, though the youths were passing beyond him. and seeing the naked translucent ice heaving downwards in a vicious curve, always the same dark translucency underfoot, he was afraid. if he slipped, he would certainly slither the whole way down, and break some of his bones. even when he sat down he had to cling with his finger-nails in the ice, because if he had started to slide he would have slid the whole way down on his trouser-seat, precipitously, and have landed heaven knows how.
hannele was watching from below. and he was frightened, perched, seated on the shoulder of ice and not knowing how to get off. above he saw the great blue gills of ice ridging the air. down below were two blue cracks — then the last wet level claws of ice upon the stones. and there stood hannele and the three or four people who had got so far.
however, he found that by striking in his heels sideways with sufficient sharpness he could keep his footing, no matter how steep the slope. so he started to jerk his way zig-zag downwards.
as he descended, arrived a guide with a black beard and all the paraphernalia of ropes and pole and bristling boots. he and his gentlemen began to strike their way up the ice. with those bristling nails like teeth in one’s boots, it was quite easy: and a pole to press on to.
hannele, who had got sick of waiting, and who was also frightened, had gone scuttling on the return journey. he hurried after her, thankful to be off the ice, but excited and gratified. looking round, he saw the guide and the men on the ice watching the ice-world and the weather. then they too turned to come down. the day wasn’t safe.
