"Bad joke," Karl pronounced.
Jonathan bade the departing party good-night, then sat down again to his coffee and brandy alone. He slipped again into umber thoughts. Dragon had only twenty-four hours in which to designate the target.
The mountain, and the target, and Jemima. And behind it all, his house and paintings—they were what mattered.
He found himself tightening up, so he sent little calming messages along his nerve system to sap and control the tension. But still his shoulders were stiff and it required muscular contraction to flatten the frown from his forehead.
"May I join you?" The phrasing was interrogative, but not the tone. Karl sat before Jonathan responded.
There was a short silence during which Jonathan sipped off the last of his brandy. Freytag was ill at ease, his normally rigid posture tightened to brittle. "I came to have a word with you."
"I assumed that, yes."
"I want to thank you for this afternoon."
"Thank me?"
"I had expected that you would oppose my route—my leadership. If you had, the others would have joined you. Herr Bowman is really your man, after all. And Bidet blows with the wind." Karl glanced down without altering his angular posture. "It is important to me, you know. Leading this party is important to me."
"So it would seem."
Freytag picked up a spoon and carefully replaced it where it belonged. "Herr Doctor?" he said without looking up. "You don't like me very much, do you?"
"No. Not much."
Karl nodded. "I thought not. You find me—unpleasant?" He looked at Jonathan, a faint smile bravely in place.
"Unpleasant, yes. Also socially inept and terribly unsure of yourself."
Karl laughed hoarsely. "Me? Unsure of myself?"
"Uh-huh. With the usual overcompensation for altogether justified feelings of inferiority that marks the typical German."
"Do you always find people to be typically this or that?"
"Only the typical ones."
"How simple life must be for you."
"No, life isn't simple. Most of the people I meet are."
Freytag adjusted the position of the spoon slightly with his forefinger. "You have been good enough to be frank with me, Herr Doctor. Now I shall be frank with you. I want you to understand why it is so important to me to lead this climb."
"That isn't necessary."
"My father—"
"Really, Karl. I don't care."
"My father is not sympathetic with my interest in climbing. I am the last of the family line, and it is his wish that I follow him in the business. Do you know what our corporation makes?"
Jonathan did not answer; he was surprised and uncomfortable at the fragile tone of Karl's voice, and he did not want to be a receptacle for this boy's troubles.
"We make insecticides, our family." Karl looked out the window toward patches of snow fluorescent with moonlight. "And that is rather amusing when you realize that during the war we made... we made..." Karl pressed his upper lip against his teeth and blinked the shine from his eyes.
"You were only five years old when the war ended, Karl."
"Meaning it wasn't my fault?"
"Meaning you have no right to the artificial tragedy you enjoy playing."
Karl looked at him bitterly, then turned aside. "My father thinks I am incapable—not serious-minded enough to assume my responsibilities. But he will have to admire me soon. You said that you find me unpleasant—socially inept. Well, let me tell you something. I do not have to depend on social niceties to achieve—what I want to achieve. I am a great climber. Both by natural gift and intensive training, I am a great climber. Better than you. Better than Anderl. When you are behind me on the rope, you will see." His eyes were intense. "Someday everyone will say that I am a great climber. Yes." He nodded curtly. "Yes. And my father will boast to his business friends about me."
Jonathan was angry with the boy at that moment. Now the sanction would be difficult, no matter which one it was. "Is that all you wanted to say to me, Karl?"
"Yes."
"Then you'd better get along. I assume Madame Bidet is awaiting you."
"She told you..."
"No." Jonathan turned away and looked out through the window to where the mountain's presence was a bulky starlessness in the night sky.
After a minute, he heard the young man rise and walk out of the dining room.
KLEINE SCHEIDEGG: July 10
Jonathan awoke late, the sun already flaring through his window and pooling warmly on his blankets. He was not eager to face the day. He had sat up late in the dining room, staring at the black rectangle of the window beyond which was the invisible Eiger. His thoughts had wandered from the climb, to the sanction, to Jemima. When at last he had forced himself to go up to his room for sleep, he had met Anna in the hall; she was just closing the door to Karl's room.
Not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in her dress, she stood looking at him calmly, almost contemptuously, sure of his discretion.
"May I offer you a nightcap?" he asked, pushing open his door.
"That would be nice." She passed before him into his room.
They sipped Laphroaig in silence, an odd bond of comradeship between them based on their mutual realization that they constituted no threat to each other. They would never make love; the qualities of emotional reserve and human exploitation they shared and admired insulated them from each other.
"Blessed are the meek," Anna mused, "for we shall inherit them."
Jonathan was smiling in agreement when suddenly he stopped and listened attentively to a distant rumbling.
"Thunder?" Anna asked.
Jonathan shook his head. "Avalanche."
The sound pulsed twice to higher volumes, then subsided. Jonathan finished his Scotch.
"They must be very frightening when you are up there," Anna said.
"They are."
"I cannot understand why Jean-Paul insists on making this climb at his age."
"Can't you?"
She looked at him dubiously. "For me?"
"As you well know."
She dropped her lavish lashes and looked into her whiskey glass. "Pauvre être," she said quietly.
There were noticeable changes in emotional disposition around the breakfast table. Ben's funk had worn away and his more typical hardy humor had returned. The crisp weather and a strong high pressure cone that had moved in from the north inflated his hopes for the success of the climb. The recent snow on the higher ice fields had not had time to glaciate and bind to the perennial neve, but so long as the weather held, a major avalanche was not likely.
"Unless a foehn comes in," Karl corrected morosely.
The possibility of a foehn had been in the back of each climber's mind, but there was nothing to be gained by mentioning it. One could neither predict nor protect himself from these vagrant eddies of warm air that slip into the Bernese Oberland infrequently. A foehn would bring raging storms to the face, and the warmer air would make the snow unreliable and avalanche-prone.
Karl's mood had changed also since the evening before. A kind of self-indulgent petulance had replaced the typical nervous aggression. This was due partly, Jonathan imagined, to regret over having spilled his emotional garbage at Jonathan's feet. It was also due in part to his having made love to Anna, a burden his sin-sodden Protestant morality could not face glibly the next morning in the presence of the husband.
And indeed Jean-Paul was dour that morning. He was tense and irritable and their waiter—never a model of skill and intelligence—received the brunt of his displeasure. It was Jonathan's belief that Jean-Paul was struggling with inner doubts about age and ability now that the moment of the climb was approaching inexorably.
Anderl, with his face creased in a bland smile, was in an almost yoga calm. His eyes were defocused and his attention turned inward. Jonathan could tell that he was tuning himself emotionally for the climb, now only eighteen hours away.