A Winter's Love

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  So she had gone to his room. It would have looked neither more nor less guilty if she had gone simply to talk to him, if she had gone with no thought of love as in New York she had gone on occasion to his apartment for dinner or he to hers when Courtney happened to be away. Undoubtedly to Madame Pedroti that would have been full of implications, too.

  Virginia came in then, saying, “The old ghoul gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’d she want? Anything important? You do look distraught, mother. Good word, that, isn’t it? Distraught. Rhymes with all kinds of things. Taught. Brought. Ought. Wrought. Caught.” She felt the almost giddy light-headedness that always followed her violences.

  “Yes, it’s a fine word,” Emily said.

  “But what are you distraught about?”

  Emily laughed. “Oh, it seems that come spring the front yard will be a flood and we’ll have to build a sort of bridge from the door to the alley. It’s a long way till spring, though, and a lot of things can happen between now and then, so let’s forget it. Confidentially, I don’t believe the snow is ever going to melt.”

  “If winter comes, etcetera,” Virginia said. “Query: Where are the snows of yesteryear? Answer: In my mother’s garden.” Suddenly she flung her arms about Emily. “Oh, mother, I do love you so terribly much.”

  A little surprised (for Virginia had for some time felt that she was too old for the overt demonstrations of love), Emily drew the thin body to her. “I love you terribly much, too, darling.”

  “Please don’t ever change,” Virginia begged. “Please don’t ever be any different.”

  Emily looked down at the girl’s imploring face. “But, darling, people are always changing and developing. Even grownups. I don’t think I’m apt to change in any important essentials, though.”

  “I want you and daddy to stay just the way you are, always.”

  “We’ll do our best.” Emily made her voice light, and kissed Virginia.

  “What I really came in to ask you about,” Virginia said, “is it okay if Mimi and Connie and I walk up to the hotel to pick up Sam and Mr. Fielding? Mimi wanted me to ask you if it’s all right if they go with us.”

  “But, Vee, it’s been snowing off and on all morning. You don’t want to go on the télépherique today. You won’t be able to see a thing.”

  “But we do want to go. We want to go awfully. It will be exciting. And your promised.”

  “You may go if you want to, Vee. I just don’t think it’ll be very much fun.”

  “Then may we go up to the hotel now?”

  “Yes, if you like.”

  “We’ll come by for you and yodel when we get within a hundred yards of the villa. Mind you’re ready and waiting.”

  “I’ll be ready,” Emily promised.

  She was waiting for them by the gate as they came down the narrow path. Mimi and Sam were walking ahead; Abe came behind, Virginia and Connie one on each side. Emily opened the gate and stepped out to join them.

  “Not a very good day for it,” Abe said conversationally. “Sky clouded over right after sunrise.”

  “The children want to go anyhow, but it seems foolish in a way when we won’t be able to see much.”

  “Yes,” Abe said. “It’s a gorgeous view, but we’ll take them again.”

  —He’s forgetting that they’re leaving, she thought. He’s talking as though things were going to go on, as though there were a future.

  Virginia and Connie ran on ahead and caught up with Mimi and Sam, and Emily fell into step beside Abe. “Hello, darling,” he said in a low voice.

  “Hello.”

  Ahead of them Virginia’s voice rose cheerfully. “There are all kinds of things I want to do when I’m dead. I’d like to have all my life go before me like a play, only I’d be in it and I’d be watching it at the same time. And I’d have it repeated and repeated so I really saw all of it, so I could be really aware of every minute. We miss an awful lot of our lives while we’re living them. And I’d like to hear everything everyone ever said or thought about me. All the bad things and all the good things. A complete evaluation. The height of egotism—or is it egoism—?”

  “Same difference, I think,” Sam said.

  “Anyhow I know it’s the height of it, but you must admit it’s a fascinating idea and would take care of quite a few centuries out of eternity.”

  “Very entertaining thinking, old girl,” Mimi said, “but it doesn’t gibe with what I imagine you’ve been taught about God.”

  “Oh, okay, Mimi Opp, I know how you feel about God and you’re just trying to get me into an argument, but for once I’m not going to bite. As for you and God, people didn’t believe in the possibility of airplanes or radios, either, or, to put it more in your pet terminology, in anaesthesia or vaccination, but those things were there waiting to be discovered all the time. Maybe God’s waiting to be discovered, too.”

  “Pretty profound, your daughter,” Abe said.

  “And quite right about being an egoist or -tist, I’m afraid.”

  “No,” Abe said. “Just a good healthy awareness of a developing personality. I like your children, Emily.”

  “And I like Sam. I think we’re really pretty lucky, both of us. On the whole we’ve produced rather nice specimens.”

  “I would have liked a lot of kids,” Abe said, his face suddenly darkening. He looked at Emily and opened his mouth to say something and closed it again.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Something better left unsaid. Come on, the kids are ahead of us. Let’s catch up.” He took her hand and they ran, laughing and gasping for breath, the cold air tearing their dry throats. They caught up with the children at the télépherique station. The place lay deserted in the damp cold, without the usual group of tourists milling about, and only the engineer and Pierre Balbec, Kaarlo’s cousin, in attendance.

  “You mean you want to ride?” Pierre asked incredulously.

  “Sure we want to ride,” Sam said. “Six of us.”

  Pierre shook his head, his hair dark and sleek in contrast to Kaarlo’s sun-bleached straw. “Nobody in his right mind wants to ride the télépherique on a day like this. Jules Pépain’s mother is sick and he’s gone to Lyons taking his wife with him and there’s nobody to take their place till tomorrow; at this time of year everyone is already working. You won’t be able to get anything to eat or drink. No chocolate bars. No hot soup.” He explained expansively with his hands.

  “That’s all right,” Sam said. “We just want to go for the ride. We’re not looking for views.”

  Pierre grinned at Abe and Emily. “It’s a good thing you’re not looking for a view because you won’t get one. You’ll be lost in the clouds. It’s going to start snowing again any minute, too. However—” He shrugged.

  “That’s okay,” Sam said. “When do we start?”

  “Kids,” Pierre said. “I wish I still liked to do crazy things the way I used to when I was a kid. But ever since I had that bad fall on the mountain and broke my leg I’ve preferred staying at home. Well, get on in. I’ll take you myself. Philippe is in bed with an inflammation. Everything is out of order today and you have to come demand a ride.” But he said it with perfect good nature and led the way up the steps to the wooden platform beside which the small red car was suspended from the heavy cable. As it hung surrounded by the gray day and the lowering mountains it looked like an incredibly rickety antique from an amusement park.

  “You first, Madame Bowen,” Pierre, said, and as he moved they could see that he still limped from the accident on the mountains. “Now the children. And Monsieur Fielding.”

  “Should we all ride together?” Abe asked. “Aren’t there too many of us?”

  “Couldn’t we go alone, dad?” Sam begged quickly. “Please let us.”

  “Oh, yes, please, mother,” Virginia said.

  “We’ll take good care of Connie,” Mimi promised. “And you and Mr. Fielding could go in the next car, Mrs. Bowen.”r />
  “Well they don’t have to go if they don’t want to,” Virginia said.

  Abe looked at Pierre. “Would it be all right for them?”

  Pierre lifted his hands and shrugged. “Why not?” They’re good kids. I’ll look after them. But if you want to ride you’ll have to wait for me; there’s no man for the other car with Philippe out.”

  “Please, dad,” Sam said.

  Abe put his hand on his shoulder. “All right, Sam. I trust you to take care of the three girls. And all of you do exactly as Pierre tells you. Right?”

  “Right,” Sam said.

  Emily got out and stepped back onto the platform; Pierre closed the door and pulled the lever that started the car up the mountain.

  Abe and Emily stood looking after the car, watching it dim and then disappear entirely as it climbed into cloud. Emily took a step closer to Abe and her coat touched his, and the very contact of their clothes was a caress.

  “It’s cold out here, dearest, and we can’t see them any more,” Abe said. He put his arm around Emily and led her into the small empty station. There was a wood fire burning in the stove and the windows were streaming with steam. The engineer was in the room beyond but the door was closed and they could not see him or he them. Abe drew Emily to him and kissed her. For a moment she relaxed in his arms. Then she moved away and he turned and walked to one of the small windows and stood there as though he were looking out. “Sometimes I think I can’t stand it,” he said. “Here is something simple and lovely, and the way the world is has conspired to make it complicated and difficult so that last night I had to run away from you. I couldn’t bear being with you but not being with you a moment longer.”

  Emily sat down on one of the wooden benches against the wall. After a moment Abe came and sat down beside her. He took one of her hands and very carefully pulled it out of the glove. He handed the glove to her and then held her hand in his. “This is our last day, Emily,” he said. “Tomorrow Sam and I are going for a climb with Kaarlo, and the next day we leave. Could you come out to dinner with me tonight? Could we dance again?”

  “No,” Emily said.

  “Why not?”

  “What about Courtney?”

  “Ask him to come along.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Abe,” she said, “you know I want to, more than anything. You know it would be lovely. And you know that I can’t.”

  “Of course I know it. And we’re having this time together and we’re wasting it agonizing. Kiss me and don’t pull away.”

  They kissed. They sat there side by side on the wooden bench in the small station and they kissed each other and for the moment there was nothing between them but love and joy; and, as always when they kissed, lost in the moment, suspended in time with nothing behind and nothing before, they were so happy that they would pull apart laughing for sheer joy; and then they would kiss again.

  “Look,” Abe said, breaking away at last. “Can you come to me tonight?” He did not look at her as he said it. He pulled her to him again and pressed his face against her.

  No.

  There was no answer but no.

  In the cold light of day coming so palely in the small soiled windows there was nothing to say to him but no.

  She had made up her mind the night before that she was going to sleep with Abe, that she was going to “get him out of her system.” She had Courtney’s permission, albeit in a back-handed sort of way, and she had thought that she could do it, and she couldn’t. In spite of the pain of wanting it, she could not do it. (If Abe had not run away from her the night before at Gertrude’s would she have been able then in the freshness of her resolution to break through every barrier with which her upbringing and beliefs had surrounded her and go with him?)

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t,” she repeated. She got up and walked over to the stove and held her hands out to it, saying lamely, “Pedroti made a phony excuse to come see me this morning just so she could make some insinuating remarks about us. If she saw me come to your room tonight it’d be all over the village by morning.”

  “There are other hotels,” he said. “There are hotels where we aren’t known.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She turned from the stove, took a step towards him, stopped, and beat her hands together as though to warm them. “Abe, I’m married to Courtney. I can’t do it to him.”

  “What about me?”

  “Oh, Abe, don’t.”

  “Is it asking too much for you to divorce Courtney and marry me?”

  “Yes!” she shouted, because her reaction was almost a physical one. This was the one question that he must not ask, the one question that she could not answer, because it was the one question that demanded an answer. An irrevocable answer.

  For a moment it seemed as though she had actually given him a shove. He asked again, shouting back, “Why?”

  Then it was that the door burst open and the children tumbled in. They had not heard them. Abe moved over to the window again, his face gray against the glass.

  “Golly, peoples, it was terrific!” Sam said.

  “Oh, Mrs. Bowen, you and Mr. Fielding have to go,” Mimi said. “It couldn’t have been more beautiful with a view.”

  “I was a small amount scared,” Virginia said. “Sometimes infinity can be a little too awe-inspiring. But it was worth it.”

  “Pierre doesn’t speak English,” Connie said. “He speaks French and German and Italian and he says he’s prob’bly the only man in the village who doesn’t speak English and he says I speak very good French.”

  “You do, you little villain,” Mimi said.

  Sam gave Abe an affectionate shove. “Pierre’s waiting. Go on, dad.”

  “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Virginia said to Emily in a small voice. “Or I could go with you or something—”

  But Abe had opened the station door. “Come on, Emily.” His voice was brusque.

  They went out to the car and Pierre turned to Abe. “You’re going to have to ride this toy or the kids will be down on you.”

  “We’re going,” Abe said.

  Pierre was beating his mittened hands together, and kept the car steady only with one foot as Emily stepped in. It swung out from the platform a little and she reached instinctively for Abe’s hand.

  “It may sway a little because the wind is rising and we are so few,” Pierre said, as Abe secured the door with the heavy leather strap and rusty buckle. “But don’t worry, madame, it’s perfectly safe.” He raised one hand to signal the engineer, then moved the heavy lever across the floor. With a grunt and a groan the car started moving; a few jerks and they were beyond the platform, hanging ten feet above the snowy ground.

  That was all they could see. Snow on the ground below them, snow in the sky above them and wind moving like a great bird between. Occasionally they drew past a tree, its branches blackened with ice, with patches of white drawn here and there by snow. In the hanging car their breaths came out in white gusts. As they reached the halfway mark up the mountain they passed the car coming down, empty and swaying.

  All this time not a word between them. Occasionally Pierre would point out something to them; once he remarked on the unusually long cold spell and the sickness it seemed to have brought. They replied to him but there was a chasm between them far greater than the one over which they hung. “A lot of ’flu this year,” Pierre said, “and all at once and of course at the busiest season.”

  They reached the top of the ascent, the car still swinging lightly on the cable. Pierre unstrapped the door and they clambered out onto the platform, Emily following Abe and Pierre into a gaunt stone building that had the austere beauty of a monastery. The restaurant, café, and restrooms were barren and locked, and the stone ceiling made a hollow echo as they strode across the engine room with the great oil-smeared ma
chines that operated the cables. Pierre spoke briefly to the old man who tended them; then he led them out of the engine room through another exit. They stepped out onto the platform and the wind brushed by Emily with the insistence of a man.

  Pierre opened the door to a red car similar to the one in which they had come up the mountain, holding it steady. They got in and he pulled the lever that operated the car and it jerked and swung away from the peak of mountain by which it had been resting. Now they were lost in clouds. They could see only the briefest length of cable above them before it was lost on either side in whiteness. It seemed incredible that the cable reached from mountain peak to mountain peak. The car was moving slowly along in space, swinging a little, and though there was no end to the space it seemed to Emily that there must be an end to the cable.

  She knew that the valley was miles below them, that they were suspended over a great drop. But she found it difficult to believe that the valley was below them at all. The entire world seemed to have dissolved in the whiteness of cloud.

  Abe turned to her. “Why?” he demanded in English as though he had never been interrupted.

  She looked quickly over at Pierre but his back was to her and he was gazing out into space. She knew that though he claimed (with an odd sort of pride) to speak no English he probably understood a good deal and she kept her voice low, almost inaudible. “I love Courtney. I can’t do it to him.”

  “Do you love me?” he demanded.

  She said the words as though in anger or pain. “You know I do!”

  Then they were silent again. “On a clear day,” Pierre said, still staring out into cloud, “the visibility is well over a hundred miles.”

  “We will have to come again,” Abe said politely in his precise, schoolboy French, “on a better day.”

  “Monsieur is staying for long?” Pierre asked.

  “No, but I hope to come back.”

  Silence again, and drifting through white blankness: compulsively Emily turned to look at Abe and he said, “Emily, how do you love Courtney?”