First Tracks

by Catherine O'Connell

  And then he was gone.

  I lay back down on the princess bed shaking with anger and replayed his words. Did his father really do what he had just tried to do to his employees? I severely doubted it. But what in Carlos’s make-up made him think he was entitled to assault me? My first impulse was to tell his father what Carlos had tried to do – but to what end if his words held true? The feeling of violation from all those years back rose up again. Only this time I’d been able to rescue myself. But what about the next woman that Carlos tried to violate?

  Unfortunately, I was in no position to solve that problem, being a mere servant in the Kingdom of Alvarez. But there was one problem I could solve and that was to change my venue. I decided right then I’d had enough of St Moritz. It was probably going to cost me a fortune to get home on my own coin, but I was so out of there it wasn’t even funny.

  FORTY-THREE

  It was another early-morning wake-up. I was showered and my duffel bag was packed and waiting at the door by six thirty. I would have already made my departure if not for the little detail that my best boards were hostage in the ski shop and it didn’t open until seven.

  So much for being a princess. Like all things in this world, there’s a price to being a princess, one I would never be willing to pay.

  The moment the clock ticked seven, I was on the elevator to the lobby after scouting the area to make sure none of the Alvarezes were in sight. Not knowing whether they would even realize I had gone, I left a note for Pablo with the concierge, explaining a family emergency had forced me home. Of course, the note made no mention that the family in the emergency was theirs. I wondered how Carlos would react to my absence, but on second thought I was putting my money on the patriarch not even mentioning it to the others.

  The moment the ski shop opened, I picked up my skis and was on a shuttle to the train station faster than a hawk on a field mouse. Once at the station, I went to buy my ticket and was disappointed to learn I would have to wait until later in the day. Though the trains to Zurich were frequent, this was a busy time of year and the early trains were all sold out. I bought a ticket on the eleven o’clock train and wondered what the hay I would do to occupy myself for the next four hours. Having no desire to warm a bench in the train station until my departure, I checked my bags at the depot and walked back into town.

  Despite my negative experiences thus far, there was still no denying the beauty of St Moritz and its setting. Like Aspen, every limit had been tried, and like Aspen, some limits held and some hadn’t. Many charming lodges and storefronts had been replaced by glitzy multi-level buildings, and I could see the large, empty houses the shuttle driver had spoken of – the ones that were occupied two weeks a year.

  The day was sunny and quite pleasant, and as I wandered I was happy to be free of the claustrophobic moneyed atmosphere of Badrutt’s. After meandering for forty-five minutes, I found myself on the same street Chris and I dined on the night before. In fact, not only was I on the same street, but the Welcome was directly across from me. I crossed the street and went inside to take another look.

  The room was half-filled with people in ski clothes devouring breakfasts of eggs and sausage and apple-filled pancakes and bowls of yogurt and granola in preparation for a day of skiing. The inviting smell of coffee filled the air. I took a seat at the empty bar and studied the photograph that had caught my eye the night before. Last night’s bartender had been replaced by a pretty woman with blond shoulder-length hair tied in a neat ponytail. Her cheeks were a natural rosy pink, and her full lips were painted with a lipstick the same rosy color.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked in English.

  I ordered an espresso and while she prepared it, I stared at the picture that had so intrigued me the night before, trying to fill in the face hidden behind the fur hat. Could it really be who I thought it was? When the bartender returned with my coffee, I asked her, ‘Do you by chance happen to know anything about the woman in that picture?’

  Just as the bartender last night had done, she turned and stared at the photo. Only her face lacked the animosity his had displayed. ‘Inga Lena? I knew her well. We worked together in hotel three years ago. We were roommates when I first came to St Moritz. She was married to Werner Mayer. They died together in avalanche.’

  ‘She looks very much like someone I know and I wonder if they could be related. Is she Czech?’

  ‘No, I’m Czech. She was Swede. Before she married, she was Inga Lena Bergstrom.’

  ‘A Swede?’ This information baffled me, throwing the thrust of my inquiry off. I looked back at the picture. The resemblance was uncanny, but there was no denying that the woman in the photo was Swedish and dead. Still, something unanswered drove me to learn more. ‘Where in Sweden was she from?’

  ‘She came from very north of Sweden, a town called Falun. She would tell me how she hated winters there. Nights so long and days so short.’ There was a barely audible sigh as she added, ‘It’s shame they choose such dangerous piste that day.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Avalanche risk high,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m Greta Westerlind,’ I volunteered unasked.

  ‘Christina Schmidt. My pleasure to meet you. You are American?’

  ‘Yes. From Aspen.’

  ‘Aspen,’ she echoed, her eyes filled with a wistful sort of recognition. ‘I wanted to go there some years ago. But passport was stolen right before. All that work to get visa and I never made trip. I married Jan instead. We talk about going next year.’

  ‘Probably better off staying here the way things are in my country these days,’ I said, letting a rare political opinion drop. I finished my coffee and paid the bill. Then I headed out the door, stopping to pick up one of the restaurant’s cards on my way out.

  The Glacier Express is most likely one of the most stunning train rides in the world, but it was basically lost on me. As the train wound along impossible mountain passes across imposing terrain, my mind was wrapped around Inga Lena Bergstrom Mayer, dead three years ago in an avalanche that took both her life and her husband’s. As I peered down at small towns banked on both sides by peaks so high they probably enjoyed no more than two hours of sun a day at this time of year, I kept trying to work out what it was about Inga Lena Mayer that was making me crazy. The fact that her husband died in the same avalanche as she did was disturbing. Was I drawing a parallel between Inga Lena and Werner and me and Warren somewhere in my head? Or was I looking for something more? The great peaks of the white-capped mountains towered over me, and my thoughts turned inward in a blur. Then the truth hit me like a ton of bolts.

  Suddenly Aspen was looking far away and my Everest climb even farther. Instead of being Odysseus on the way home, I was Jason in search of the golden calf. And though it was way out of budget, something told me the answers to my questions were waiting in Falun.

  FORTY-FOUR

  It was dark when my flight from Zurich landed in Stockholm and darker still on the train north. Falun, it seems, is poised on the edge of the planet. There is no nearby airport, but for some reason enough people want to go there that the trains run regularly. What that reason is, I have no idea, but I asked myself that question a number of times as we pulled into the station and I disembarked on to a platform whipped by a raw wind and encircled with flat white.

  There were taxis queued up so I got into one and asked to be taken to a reasonably priced hotel. Ten minutes later we pulled up in front of a modest low-slung red-brick building that looked more like a home than a hotel. There was a reason. Turns out it was a home turned into a B&B and was owned by a most delightful widow named Agneta Aronsson. She was blond and blue-eyed – no surprise there – over six feet tall and rail thin. Probably the age my grandmother would be, if I had one. When I dragged myself into the front door of the inn carrying my skis and my bag and told her that I needed a room, she took one look at me and decided I needed some looking after as well.

  ‘Where are
you coming from?’ she asked, eying my tired face as she looked at my passport and handed it back to me.

  ‘I was in St Moritz this morning.’

  ‘You came all the way from Switzerland today? You poor girl, you must be exhausted. We’ll get you a warm meal and a warm bed and you can tell me your story tomorrow.’

  She led me to a small but comfortable room with a pair of twin beds side by side and a wooden writing desk poised in front of a darkened window. I was in the process of washing up when there was a knock on the door and it was Agneta carrying a tray with a bowl of steaming soup and a small stack of knäckebröd, the preferred Swedish breadstuff my mother would eat whenever she could find it. I was so hungry I barely tasted the soup and ate the entire pile of knäckebröd. Then I pulled on my T-shirt, lay down on the bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  When I awoke the next morning at nine o’clock it was still dark. I don’t know what else I would have expected in January in the north of Sweden. No wonder my mother said her childhood winters had depressed her. They’d probably depressed Inga Lena as well. I dressed and went into the main room. There were several other guests sitting at scattered tables, drinking coffee and eating bread and herring. I took a table by myself and Agneta appeared with a pot of coffee.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked.

  ‘Like a rock,’ I admitted. ‘What time does the sun come up anyway?’

  ‘In January around nine thirty. But this is not so bad. December is the bad month.’

  I reminded myself to never visit Sweden for the holidays. Then, with little to lose, I decided to lob a question her way regarding Inga Lena Bergstrom. After all, it was a small town.

  ‘I’m actually here trying to get some information on a woman from Falun who moved to St Moritz years ago. Inga Lena Bergstrom. She would be in her early thirties. Did you know her?’

  ‘Inga Lena Bergstrom, you say?’ She paused long enough to build up my hopes before saying. ‘I don’t believe I know of her.’

  Darn, I thought. Then who ever said it was going to be easy? But rather than try to track down a person I didn’t know in a country where I didn’t speak the language, I decided to enlist Agneta’s help.

  ‘The reason I’ve come to Falun is to find anyone who knew her. I have some questions to ask about her. I don’t suppose you have a phone book?’

  Being a hotel of sorts, she kept a phone book for the guests and when she brought it out I thumbed through the alphabetical listings. As it turned out, Bergstroms were plentiful. At least twenty, but no Inga Lena. Agneta’s eagle eye was glued on me and she could see my disappointment at the number of names listed. She took the book from me and pulled out her cell phone.

  ‘Here, let me help.’ Moving her fingers down the list of Bergstroms, she started dialing. Seven times, I heard her blabber something in Swedish followed by the name Inga Lena. Seven times I heard her say ‘tack sa mycket’ and hang up. On the eighth try, she stopped mid call and raised a thumb in the air. The conversation went on a bit longer before she hung up. Her face was unsmiling as she said, ‘She was married to their deceased son, Magnus. They weren’t too pleased when I mentioned her name, but they agreed to see you. At one o’clock. And they invited you to lunch. They live in the old town. I will take you.’

  When we left the B&B around noon the sun was up and overhead making it hard to believe that dawn had broken only two hours before. There was an hour before my lunch date at the Bergstroms’, so Agneta insisted I allow her to show me around. Riding in her Volvo – no surprise there – her pride in her hometown shone through.

  Our first stop was a large scaled-back patch of earth, a massive pit which she explained had been an operating copper mine until recent years and was now part of UNESCO. Though the pit was brushed white with snow, the red earth showed through – Falun red, she explained. She informed me that there was a tour to where miners went daily nearly a century ago and asked if I was interested. I took a pass on the tour. My interest in being deep underground is somewhere on a par with my interest in investment banking.

  The next landmark we visited was the Lugnet sports complex with its famous ski jump. There were two jumps actually, side by side, and they were visible from a great distance, like the old-fashioned water towers had been in Milwaukee. As we drew near, the ski jumps looked like they probably rose as far above ground as the mine descended below. I was far more interested in the jumps than the mine, having never witnessed a ski jump before. As it was a Saturday, there was a competition going on and when Agneta asked if I wanted to watch for a while, I quickly agreed.

  We stood next to the car watching from the parking lot. There was a jumper up top waiting on a bar perpendicular to the run itself. I asked Agneta how high the jump was and she told me fifty-two meters. Even from a distance, I could sense the energy coiled in the red spandex-clad figure waiting his turn on high. And then the signal came and the jumper was on his skis, racing downwards from the height of a fifteen-story building, faster and faster, gaining speed until he hit the end of the jump and flew free of anything attached to Sweden, or this earth, for that matter. His long skis were spread in a ‘V’ with his body centered in between as he sailed effortlessly through the air.

  After travelling what seemed a football field, he floated downward until his skis united gracefully with terra firma. People standing near the jump started shouting in Swedish. Agneta turned to me with a smile. ‘That’s a local woman and she’s just broken her personal best.’ It wasn’t until that moment that I realized the he was a she. She had coasted to a stop and people were running up to congratulate her as we climbed back into the Volvo.

  ‘And now on to the Bergstrom house,’ said Agneta.

  FORTY-FIVE

  The Bergstrom house was surprisingly reminiscent of an American farmhouse, down to the picket fence, but instead of being painted white it was painted Falun red. My knock was answered immediately by a couple standing together in the doorway. Lars and Margaretha Bergstrom were in their late sixties, he a mere stick of a man, she a sturdy woman who had clearly once been a beauty.

  ‘You are Greta,’ the woman said in accented English. ‘Welcome into our house. I hope you are hungry. We’ve planned lunch.’

  I could tell by their enthusiasm that visitors were rare and my staying for lunch posed no imposition. They led me to a simple square table that was total Ikea dating back to before Ikea existed. It was evident that they were simple frugal people.

  ‘So you are American?’ Lars asked.

  ‘Yes. From Colorado. Aspen. It’s a ski town.’

  ‘Yes, we know of it. Skiing is a particular love of the Swedes.’

  ‘And there are a lot of Swedes who have made Aspen their home.’

  They both nodded knowingly at this information, as if living in a ski area was the master plan of all Swedes. We talked a little polite talk, avoiding politics, though they did pose a questioning statement about the current president, which I managed to sidestep. ‘There’s always another election,’ I said and let it drop at that.

  Margaretha disappeared into the kitchen and came out with three large bowls. ‘You like herring?’ she asked. I nodded, not really knowing the answer to that question. Herring was something I’d managed to avoid thus far in my life, as evidenced by my abstinence of the fish at breakfast earlier. But as I was the guest of these lovely people, I felt I had no option but to accept. When I took a bite of the fish, it surprised me. Something in my psyche had informed me that that herring was going to be unpleasant and strong tasting. That something had been wrong.

  ‘Your friend said on the phone that you wanted to talk about Magnus?’ Lars asked as he tucked into his fish.

  ‘Actually, it was more about your former daughter-in-law. Can you tell me about her?’ Knots appeared in both their jaws and dislike colored their faces. Not quite sure myself what I wanted from them, I recovered quickly and said, ‘But first tell me about Magnus.’

  With joy and enthusiasm, they t
old me all about their only child, who was the perfect son, a good student and an accomplished athlete. ‘He was the best jumper in town,’ said Lars. ‘He was destined to break world records.’ Then, with heads hung low, they went on to tell me about the beautiful girl with whom their son had fallen absolutely ‘sommarmorgon’. ‘He lost all sanity. She was a beautiful-looking girl, but underneath she was a witch who put him under a spell. Her parents were dead and she was looking for someone to take care of her. They got married and from the beginning all she wanted was more, more, more,’ Margaretha said. ‘She thought Magnus would bring her riches as a famous jumper.’

  ‘Until he missed a landing one day and broke his …’ Lars struggled for the word and finally found it: ‘Femur. He broke his femur. They told him he would never jump again. Or ski.’

  ‘She changed toward him after that,’ Margaretha chimed in. ‘He was no longer the promise. She started to treat him poorly. And then, Inga Lena …’ Margaretha paused as if letting the name slide across her tongue pained her: ‘She had an affair with one of the owners of the mine. It nearly killed Magnus.’

  Which brought me to the reason for my visit. I didn’t want to exacerbate their grief by telling them that Inga Lena had ended up in St Moritz, but I needed to know about Magnus’s death. ‘How did your son die?’

  Lars stoically told me of the freakish house fire that occurred shortly after Inga Lena’s affair had come to light. An open can of paint left too close to the fire had ignited. Inga Lena had been at the movies with girlfriends the night of the fire. She disappeared shortly afterwards, taking what little savings they had with her.

  ‘And as the Americans say, “good riddance”,’ he added.

  Margaretha went into the kitchen and brought out the next course along with a bottle of schnapps. For the next hour we ate and drank schnapps and talked about kinder things. Just before dessert, they brought out pictures of their son.