A farewell to arms
“For the winter sport. We are tourists and we want to do the winter
sport.”
“This is no place for winter sport.”
“We know it. We want to go where they have the winter sport.”
“What have you been doing in Italy?”
“I have been studying architecture. My cousin has been studying art.”
“Why do you leave there?”
“We want to do the winter sport. With the war going on you cannot study
architecture.”
“You will please stay where you are,” the lieutenant said. He went back
into the building with our passports.
“You’re splendid, darling,” Catherine said. “Keep on the same track. You
want to do the winter sport.”
“Do you know anything about art?”
“Rubens,” said Catherine.
“Large and fat,” I said.
“Titian,” Catherine said.
“Titian-haired,” I said. “How about Mantegna?”
“Don’t ask hard ones,” Catherine said. “I know him though—very bitter.”
“Very bitter,” I said. “Lots of nail holes.”
“You see I’ll make you a fine wife,” Catherine said. “I’ll be able to
talk art with your customers.”
“Here he comes,” I said. The thin lieutenant came down the length of the
custom house, holding our passports.
“I will have to send you into Locarno,” he said. “You can get a carriage
and a soldier will go in with you.”
“All right,” I said. “What about the boat?”
“The boat is confiscated. What have you in those bags?”
He went all through the two bags and held up the quarter-bottle of
brandy. “Would you join me in a drink?” I asked.
“No thank you.” He straightened up. “How much money have you?”
“Twenty-five hundred lire.”
He was favorably impressed. “How much has your cousin?”
Catherine had a little over twelve hundred lire. The lieutenant was
pleased. His attitude toward us became less haughty.
“If you are going for winter sports,” he said, “Wengen is the place. My
father has a very fine hotel at Wengen. It is open all the time.”
“That’s splendid,” I said. “Could you give me the name?”
“I will write it on a card.” He handed me the card very politely.
“The soldier will take you in to Locarno. He will keep your passports. I
regret this but it is necessary. I have good hopes they will give you a
visa or a police permit at Locarno.”
He handed the two passports to the soldier and carrying the bags we
started into the village to order a carriage. “Hi,” the lieutenant
called to the soldier. He said something in a German dialect to him. The
soldier slung his rifle on his back and picked up the bags.
“It’s a great country,” I said to Catherine.
“It’s so practical.”
“Thank you very much,” I said to the lieutenant. He waved his hand.
_“Service!_” he said. We followed our guard into the village.
We drove to Locarno in a carriage with the soldier sitting on the front
seat with the driver. At Locarno we did not have a bad time. They
questioned us but they were polite because we had passports and money. I
do not think they believed a word of the story and I thought it was
silly but it was like a law-court. You did not want something
reasonable, you wanted something technical and then stuck to it without
explanations. But we had passports and we would spend the money. So they
gave us provisional visas. At any time this visa might be withdrawn. We
were to report to the police wherever we went.
Could we go wherever we wanted? Yes. Where did we want to go?
“Where do you want to go, Cat?”
“Montreux.”
“It is a very nice place,” the official said. “I think you will like
that place.”
“Here at Locarno is a very nice place,” another official said. “I am
sure you would like it here very much at Locarno. Locarno is a very
attractive place.”
“We would like some place where there is winter sport.”
“There is no winter sport at Montreux.”
“I beg your pardon,” the other official said. “I come from Montreux.
There is very certainly winter sport on the Montreux Oberland Bernois
railway. It would be false for you to deny that.”
“I do not deny it. I simply said there is no winter sport at Montreux.”
“I question that,” the other official said. “I question that statement.”
“I hold to that statement.”
“I question that statement. I myself have _luge-ed_ into the streets of
Montreux. I have done it not once but several times. Luge-ing is
certainly winter sport.”
The other official turned to me.
“Is luge-ing your idea of winter sport, sir? I tell you you would be
very comfortable here in Locarno. You would find the climate healthy,
you would find the environs attractive. You would like it very much.”
“The gentleman has expressed a wish to go to Montreux.”
“What is luge-ing?” I asked.
“You see he has never even heard of luge-ing!”
That meant a great deal to the second official. He was pleased by that.
“Luge-ing,” said the first official, “is tobogganing.”
“I beg to differ,” the other official shook his head. “I must differ
again. The toboggan is very different from the luge. The toboggan is
constructed in Canada of flat laths. The luge is a common sled with
runners. Accuracy means something.”
“Couldn’t we toboggan?” I asked.
“Of course you could toboggan,” the first official said. “You could
toboggan very well. Excellent Canadian toboggans are sold in Montreux.
Ochs Brothers sell toboggans. They import their own toboggans.”
The second official turned away. “Tobogganing,” he said, “requires a
special _piste_. You could not toboggan into the streets of Montreux.
Where are you stopping here?”
“We don’t know,” I said. “We just drove in from Brissago. The carriage
is outside.”
“You make no mistake in going to Montreux,” the first official said.
“You will find the climate delightful and beautiful. You will have no
distance to go for winter sport.”
“If you really want winter sport,” the second official said, “you will
go to the Engadine or to Mürren. I must protest against your being
advised to go to Montreux for the winter sport.”
“At Les Avants above Montreux there is excellent winter sport of every
sort.” The champion of Montreux glared at his colleague.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I am afraid we must go. My cousin is very tired.
We will go tentatively to Montreux.”
“I congratulate you,” the first official shook my hand.
“I believe that you will regret leaving Locarno,” the second official
said. “At any rate you will report to the police at Montreux.”
“There will be no unpleasantness with the police,” the first official
assured me. “You will find all the inhabitants extremely courteous and
friendly.”
“Thank you both very much,” I said. “We appreciate your advice very
much.”
“Good-by,” Catherine said. “Thank you both very much.”
They bowed us to the door, the champion of Locarno a little coldly. We
went down the steps and into the carriage.
“My God, darling,” Catherine said. “Couldn’t we have gotten away any
sooner?” I gave the name of a hotel one of the officials had recommended
to the driver. He picked up the reins.
“You’ve forgotten the army,” Catherine said. The soldier was standing by
the carriage. I gave him a ten-lira note. “I have no Swiss money yet,” I
said. He thanked me, saluted and went off. The carriage started and we
drove to the hotel.
“How did you happen to pick out Montreux?” I asked Catherine. “Do you
really want to go there?”
“It was the first place I could think of,” she said. “It’s not a bad
place. We can find some place up in the mountains.”
“Are you sleepy?”
“I’m asleep right now.”
“We’ll get a good sleep. Poor Cat, you had a long bad night.”
“I had a lovely time,” Catherine said. “Especially when you sailed with
the umbrella.”
“Can you realize we’re in Switzerland?”
“No, I’m afraid I’ll wake up and it won’t be true.”
“I am too.”
“It is true, isn’t it, darling? I’m not just driving down to the
_stazione_ in Milan to see you off.”
“I hope not.”
“Don’t say that. It frightens me. Maybe that’s where we’re going.”
“I’m so groggy I don’t know,” I said.
“Let me see your hands.”
I put them out. They were both blistered raw.
“There’s no hole in my side,” I said.
“Don’t be sacrilegious.”
I felt very tired and vague in the head. The exhilaration was all gone.
The carriage was going along the street.
“Poor hands,” Catherine said.
“Don’t touch them,” I said. “By God I don’t know where we are. Where are
we going, driver?” The driver stopped his horse.
“To the Hotel Metropole. Don’t you want to go there?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s all right, Cat.”
“It’s all right, darling. Don’t be upset. We’ll get a good sleep and you
won’t feel groggy to-morrow.”
“I get pretty groggy,” I said. “It’s like a comic opera to-day. Maybe
I’m hungry.”
“You’re just tired, darling. You’ll be fine.” The carriage pulled up
before the hotel. Some one came out to take our bags.
“I feel all right,” I said. We were down on the pavement going into the
hotel.
“I know you’ll be all right. You’re just tired. You’ve been up a long
time.”
“Anyhow we’re here.”
“Yes, we’re really here.”
We followed the boy with the bags into the hotel.
BOOK V
CHAPTER XXXVIII
That fall the snow came very late. We lived in a brown wooden house in
the pine trees on the side of the mountain and at night there was frost
so that there was thin ice over the water in the two pitchers on the
dresser in the morning. Mrs. Guttingen came into the room early in the
morning to shut the windows and started a fire in the tall porcelain
stove. The pine wood crackled and sparked and then the fire roared in
the stove and the second time Mrs. Guttingen came into the room she
brought big chunks of wood for the fire and a pitcher of hot water. When
the room was warm she brought in breakfast. Sitting up in bed eating
breakfast we could see the lake and the mountains across the lake on the
French side. There was snow on the tops of the mountains and the lake
was a gray steel-blue.
Outside, in front of the chalet a road went up the mountain. The wheel
ruts and ridges were iron hard with the frost, and the road climbed
steadily through the forest and up and around the mountain to where
there were meadows, and barns and cabins in the meadows at the edge of
the woods looking across the valley. The valley was deep and there was a
stream at the bottom that flowed down into the lake and when the wind
blew across the valley you could hear the stream in the rocks.
Sometimes we went off the road and on a path through the pine forest.
The floor of the forest was soft to walk on; the frost did not harden it
as it did the road. But we did not mind the hardness of the road because
we had nails in the soles and heels of our boots and the heel nails bit
on the frozen ruts and with nailed boots it was good walking on the road
and invigorating. But it was lovely walking in the woods.
In front of the house where we lived the mountain went down steeply to
the little plain along the lake and we sat on the porch of the house in
the sun and saw the winding of the road down the mountain-side and the
terraced vineyards on the side of the lower mountain, the vines all dead
now for the winter and the fields divided by stone walls, and below the
vineyards the houses of the town on the narrow plain along the lake
shore. There was an island with two trees on the lake and the trees
looked like the double sails of a fishing-boat. The mountains were sharp
and steep on the other side of the lake and down at the end of the lake
was the plain of the Rhone Valley flat between the two ranges of
mountains; and up the valley where the mountains cut it off was the Dent
du Midi. It was a high snowy mountain and it dominated the valley but it
was so far away that it did not make a shadow.
When the sun was bright we ate lunch on the porch but the rest of the