Nothing So Strange

by James Hilton

  Brad stared at him incredulously. “You mean I should work … here … again…?”

  “If you want to. I thought that’s why you came to see me. There are very few people qualified for this sort of thing—it would seem a pity for you to be doing anything else…. And by the way, I might be taking a post in Berlin soon- -if you liked you could come along with me.”

  Brad said: “I’ll…. I’ll have to think it over.”

  “Yes, of course. Let me know in a week or so.”

  As he left the building Brad realized that going to Berlin would give him ample opportunity for what he intended, and perhaps the only possible opportunity.

  * * * * *

  He stopped talking and lit another cigarette. The sun had moved round, so that we were now in shade, and that made the air instantly cold. “Perhaps we should move,” I said, meaning move a few yards into the sun.

  He said: “Yes, let’s go down. We don’t want to be back too late. And I’ve talked enough.”

  “We can come here again.”

  “Oh yes. Tomorrow if you like. But let’s start earlier and climb higher.”

  “Yes.”

  We gathered up the picnic things. “These are good rucksacks,” he said. “Norwegian style. They fit squarely down the back. Where on earth did you get them?”

  “I haven’t an idea. Maybe they came with the house.”

  “Like Dan and everything else?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What made your father want to live in a place like that?”

  “He says it suits his health.”

  “I thought he preferred Florida.”

  “Perhaps it had too many memories after my mother’s death.”

  “I read about that. I was terribly shocked. I wanted to write to you but I didn’t know any address…. Were you with her?”

  “I was in Canada. There was just time to join my father and fly to where it had happened. She died soon after we got there.”

  “Texas, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “Driving too fast at night.”

  “Why?”

  “God knows. Why do people do things?”

  He nodded. “That’s the same question, isn’t it? The one we were talking about.”

  We followed the rest of the trail to the car in silence. Dusk falls quickly in the mountains and before we were many miles along the road it was almost pitch-black, with just the feel of high earth or empty air out of the window. Despite the climb and the long conversation he didn’t seem so tired as during the outward drive; at any rate, he didn’t sleep. Once the headlights focused on a coyote in the middle of the road ahead; I slowed down and eventually stopped, for the animal did not move, but seemed hypnotized by the glare. Finally I switched off the lights and heard it scampering away. The darkness was alarming then; it invaded the car like something unleashed on us. Suddenly he leaned over and kissed me, not passionately, but rather experimentally.

  I said after a while: “I hate to put on the lights but if we’re going to stay here in the middle of the road….”

  He laughed. “Put them on.”

  I did so and then drove a little ahead, parking at a safe place.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well?”

  “I guess you didn’t like that.”

  “I did, but I’d hate to be run into. After all, you were fussy about fires.”

  “I know. They scare me. Maybe one reason is the way I was injured. The plane caught fire. I thought I was going to be roasted alive.”

  “And I understand you pulled the pilot out?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Never mind.”

  He said sharply: “Don’t figure me a hero, that’s all. I never got within a thousand miles of the enemy. I smashed up in Texas too.”

  “I don’t see that it makes much difference where you happen to be when you risk your life for other people.”

  “You’re being far too romantic about it.”

  “You’re being much more romantic in belittling yourself. All the storybook heroes do that. They say—Oh, it was nothing. But I know it wasn’t nothing, or you wouldn’t have been in a hospital for the past six months.”

  “I wasn’t badly hurt. I was damned lucky.”

  “But you keep on thinking about it—as you showed just now.”

  “Not thinking of it exactly.”

  “It might do you good to fly again sometime.”

  “Maybe. It isn’t important, anyway.”

  “What do you mean—not important?”

  “I mean, compared with other things.” He paused, then said: “Shall we move on, or….”

  I switched out the lights. He was still nervous and rather sweetly afraid that being kissed in a car was not quite the sort of thing I cared for. He said “cared for,” but I expect he meant “used to.” I said: “I’m not used to it, but it’s not the first time it’s happened.”

  He answered: “Nor with me, either. But in Europe one doesn’t have a car so much.”

  “Yes, it’s a great convenience, a car.”

  He said: “I always used to wonder what affairs you had, traveling about everywhere and meeting so many people…. I thought perhaps there’d be some hints in your book.”

  “No … I can keep secrets.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  And the cloud again, the hidden nerve touched. It was so obvious, even while I was keeping one eye on the road, that I said: “Oh, Brad, what comes over you at times when you suddenly look like that?”

  “Nothing that I can tell you about.”

  “All right. I don’t mind.”

  “If that’s true, it’s wonderful.”

  “It is true, Brad. Please get it into your head that you don’t have to say a thing. You’ve explained why you went to Germany, that’s what I was really curious about.”

  “And now you understand?”

  “Well, you said you went there to kill Framm.”

  “But you don’t really believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you if you say so.”

  “But it doesn’t even startle you?”

  “No more than so many other things. The world’s been a bit full of queer happenings these last few years. I’ve seen a lot that weren’t pretty. I’ve seen people beaten up, starved, terrorized, bombed—I’ve seen them under stress of all the crude emotions that you could only make credible to Park Avenue if you got Lillian Hellman to write a play about them—and then the audience wouldn’t believe in them, they’d only believe in the play…. When you tell me you decided to kill somebody it doesn’t seem too remarkable in a world that nowadays seems to have decided to kill everybody.”

  “By God, you’re more right than you know. But you take it so calmly.”

  “How else can I take it? You were calm when you visited Framm in his office that day. You must have been, or else he’d have suspected you.”

  “I used to wonder whether he did. He certainly must have puzzled over my motive in coming back to work for him. And his motive too—because after all, he invited me … but why? It was an odd situation. He’d grabbed all the credit for my work, and he must have known I knew that; he knew too that my public defense of him was only for Pauli’s sake. And he must have doubted whether I really accepted what had happened to her as a natural death. Of course he may have thought I was just a sucker about everything—except mathematics. Perhaps that fascinated him, to have someone like that around all the time … I don’t know. I’ve often tried to think it out. He was a strange man. There were different layers of his mind all revolving oppositely in concentric circles. And then, mixed up with everything else, was the work we did. I don’t mean that it brought us together in any sentimental sense, but it kept us apart from all other issues, while we were both at it. It was a sort of world in which being either a murderer or a sucker was irrelevant … if you can understand that.”

  “I t
hink I can. But it makes me wish I knew that world myself.”

  “Too bad I can’t explain much—if I tried to make it simple you wouldn’t get the right idea. It wasn’t anything dramatic or romantic. Those discoveries you read about in the papers—everything twisted out of its context to make the whole business seem like a treasure hunt—science isn’t really like that at all. But people think it is—it’s the kind of science they want to believe in, so they choose it, just as in an earlier age they chose the kind of religion that suited them. I remember once Framm got hold of an American comic strip— Buck Rogers, I think—he’d never seen anything like it before, and it amused him enormously—he passed it to me with a roar of laughter and said—‘Look— Science!—the opiate of the people!’ That’s why it’s hard to discuss science with nonscientists. It isn’t that they don’t know what you’re talking about—I wouldn’t know what a biochemist or a biologist was talking about, but as a member of the same general trade, so to speak, I should know the language of his thought even if I didn’t have the jargon. And it’s the jargon that people get a smattering of so easily these days. Framm once said that in medieval times the really popular argument was how many angels could dance on the end of a needle, whereas nowadays, judging from the magazine ads, people prefer to worry about how many microbes can dance on the end of a toothbrush…. And he wasn’t sure that was progress.”

  “I believe you rather liked Framm,” I said.

  “Liked him? Good God, no. But when you’ve made up your mind to kill somebody and you’re not sure when or how the chance will come, it’s surprising what a tie that makes between you.”

  I wondered if he were serious till I saw his face. It was under the cloud again, and we were at Vista Grande having drinks before it lifted.

  * * * * *

  We didn’t climb the next day, for a number of reasons; Brad was tired and got up late, and Dan’s car showed a flat that had to be repaired in the nearest village several miles away. It wasn’t perfect weather, either—rather moist and misty, but towards evening the sky cleared and Brad said he reckoned we should start at five in the morning if we wanted to reach the snow line. He didn’t promise the summit.

  We drove as before and by ten o’clock were at the place where we had picnicked. We stopped for coffee, then pushed on with the added zest of covering new territory. We hadn’t talked much, during either the drive or the climb, and I realized, as the trail steepened and became more overgrown, that we were on ground that might not have been trodden for weeks or even months by any other human being. Not that this was a feat, merely that so few people cared for uncelebrated mountains, or in wartime had the time or the gas for them. The whole enterprise, I said to Brad, was thoroughly unpatriotic whichever way you looked at it.

  “Suits me,” he said, refilling the thermos with water. Then he walked on ahead, and as I guessed he was in a mood to be alone, I followed a few hundred yards behind. We must have climbed for an hour like that. Suddenly we came to a point where we could see the ridge above us flattening out into a kind of meadow meeting patches of snow. “That’s where we’ll stop,” he said, pointing, and though I thought we should do better after another rest I kept on without making the suggestion.

  The trail grew sketchy, then lost itself in a wilderness of boulders, and with that curious change of perspective that mountain scenery offers, the ridge itself looked more distant as we climbed. There came a moment when I knew we were off the trail and that the rocks were hazardous if one of us should slip. He was still ahead of me, often out of sight, and I began to wonder how much more of it I could stand. Then, having scrambled up a chimney with knees and elbows, I found myself against a huge slab, steep and smooth, with only a crack for a foothold and a hundred-foot drop if one missed it. There was no other way of continuing, and I didn’t think I could keep my nerve. I shouted and heard nothing but an echo. I called his name again and again. Then I saw him. He had crossed the slab and was a stage higher, but at a place that led to a sheerly perpendicular rock face that hadn’t even a toehold. He was staring up and down as if bewildered. It seemed impossible that he had not heard my calls. “We can’t do it,” I shouted. “At least I can’t. Let’s go back.”

  He waved to me, but did not speak. The way he was standing hid his eyes and expression. But suddenly, as if a message had come directly between us, I knew he was scared. I called out: “Stay there, I’m coming up. It’s all right.”

  That made him yell back: “No, don’t. You stay where you are. It’s no use.”

  “I know it’s no use, but you’re in a bad spot. I’ll help you down.”

  “For Christ’s sake, don’t try it. I’m all right. Give me time.”

  I waited, perhaps for several minutes, then began to inch my way across the slab. I don’t know if he even saw me doing it. The crack was crumbly in places, and when a fragment fell the interval before it hit anything gave me an extra qualm. I don’t know how I got across, but at last I could relax and steady myself for a moment, gasping with a kind of fear that was new to me. I once stood in a doorway in a Paraguayan town with bullets crisscrossing the street and smashing windows all round, but I wasn’t quite so terrified.

  “You’re crazy,” Brad said, when I reached him. His face was gray and his hands still trembled.

  “You’re crazy too.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you stay where you were?”

  “Because I could see you weren’t very happy up here.”

  “You’re damn right I’m not. I’m stuck. I’ve no nerve to go up or down. That’s no reason why you should have come, though.”

  “You’ll get your nerve back soon.”

  “I don’t think I shall. I’m stuck, I tell you.”

  “That’s nonsense. You don’t suppose you’re going to be left here to starve, do you?”

  “Very funny, very funny.”

  “Now look here. Pull yourself together. Let’s sit down for a while and rest. Then if you’re still scared I’ll go down myself and bring men with ropes or something.”

  “Men with ropes? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Got to be done, if it’s the only way. There must be people in the valley- -forest rangers, maybe. They could climb up higher and drop a rope. Of course you might have to spend the night here first.”

  “Too damn cold.”

  From the way he said that I knew he was already calmer. I made him sit and there was so little room that we practically clung to each other for equilibrium. It was far too uncomfortable to be in any way romantic. We had left both rucksacks below, but we had a few cigarettes. We smoked, and all at once he began to laugh. “It is funny,” he cried. “I’ve climbed all those mountains in Switzerland—the Jungfrau, the Matterhorn, even the Finsteraarhorn- -and now I get stuck in a place like this that hasn’t even got a name!”

  “You’re not stuck. You’ll be all right in a minute.”

  “I’m a nervous wreck, that’s what’s the matter with me.”

  “No, you’re not. I was nervous too. Most people would be. I’d like to see how Newby would shape up here.”

  “Oh God, Newby! Think of it!” He thought of it and it set him laughing again. That way it effected a cure—perhaps the only time Newby really did him any good.

  “Well, what do we do?” he asked at length. “Is it to be up or down?”

  I liked the question even if it were partly bravado. “Down,” I said, “unless you want to get us into some real trouble.”

  “All right, but I’d like to try this again someday. I had my eye on that snow.”

  “Yes, we can come here again.”

  But I didn’t think we should; it was about my limit, anyhow. We finished the cigarettes and began the descent. It wasn’t as hard as I had expected and we both kept our nerve. Half an hour later we were eating sandwiches and drinking the ice-cold spring water. I suppose the small adventure gave us sensations of special ecstasy now that it was all over and no harm done. The snow still becko
ned, but our eyes were much more drawn to the rock slab that had perhaps (though perhaps not) come near to finishing us off. I told Brad I felt I could gloat over it.

  He answered: “Perhaps that’s how Framm felt about me, if he could really read my mind, but I don’t think he could.”

  He stared at the rock for a long moment, then went on: “Perhaps I was gloating too, in a different way. Over Framm, I mean. The motive of personal revenge isn’t an adult one for a civilized person, so, if it comes, he has to do something to it, or else let it do something to him—or more likely, both things meet in a compromise. You said I liked Framm—no, I didn’t—I loathed him, but there were times when I’d have been sorry if I’d heard he’d died in his bed. Once he had a bad cough—his chest was always weak after the injury—and I insisted on taking his temperature and making him go home…. And once the screen of the X-ray machine wasn’t fixed properly and he nearly got electrocuted—fifteen hundred volts—that would have finished him off, but I wasn’t thinking—I dragged him away in time. It gave me an idea, though. Meanwhile our show of getting on well and being on friendly terms would doubtless provide a good psychological alibi. The thing began to appeal to me as a problem as well as an act of retribution. I don’t know whether you’d call me mad for having such thoughts. And, as I said before, there were his motives too—they gave me another problem. I could never be certain how he felt about me, apart from knowing I was damned useful to him. Because I was, by this time. I did all the routine stuff that cropped up in his computations. I had begun to be a real mathematician, and he knew that, and I knew that he knew it, and there was that unspoken awareness between us that always exists when two people can share a tough job without wasting each other’s time.”

  “He seems to have worked much more closely with you in Berlin than he did in Vienna.”

  “Oh yes. In Vienna we only met when he came around every few days to check the galvanometer or glance at the graphs—he’d say ‘Getting along all right?’—and I’d answer ‘Oh yes’—and that would be all for perhaps another week. He probably thought I wasn’t much good, so why should he bother.”