Eighty Days to Elsewhere

by kc dyer

  “Ice fall,” she says. “Not so bad for us, but it block the tracks below, eh?”

  I look from her to Eric. “Blocked the tracks? You mean the train tracks?”

  “Yes,” she says, in an accent that sounds more German than French to me. “But my colleague tells me this ice fall was not so big. Not like a real avalanche, you understand? They clear the tracks in an hour, two, maybe. No harm done.”

  Eric hops out behind me. “Good luck to you,” he says to me, then looks at Puffy Coat Girl. “So, we are okayed for the trip down?”

  She nods, but before either of them can move, the two Asian women march past them back into the car.

  “Mesdames,” Eric says, making a polite shooing gesture. “Time to continue your journey.”

  Both women shake their heads firmly in unison. Mrs. Li, no longer hiccupping, points down the mountain. “Il faut que nous descendons tous de suite,” she says firmly, and even with my pitiful French, her meaning shines clear.

  “Vraiment?” he asks, looking surprised. “La vue est trop belle!”

  “Vraiment,” she repeats firmly.

  “Too right,” mutters Mrs. Yang, and raises her camera. “Already got what I came for.”

  Eric shrugs, lifts a hand to me, and steps back into his car. Beside me, Puffy Coat Girl flips a switch, and the car lurches out the door.

  “Ready?” she says, and I turn to see a second cable car descending to meet us from above.

  “What?” I yelp. “This isn’t the top?”

  She smiles. “You’re only halfway. I take you up the rest. It’s very quick, I promise.”

  And this, at least, turns out to be the truth.

  chapter twenty-two

  IMAGE: Aiguille du Midi

  IG: Romy_K [The French Alps, March 28]

  #TheNeedleAtNoon #DocumentDisaster

  93

  Things I learn above the Alps in France:

  1. Puffy Coat Girl’s name is Nathalie, and her trip up the mountain with me is the 807th time she’s piloted the cable car without ever once falling off the mountain.

  2. The Aiguille du Midi translates to “the stroke of noon,” and is one of eleven peaks in the Mont Blanc range. Mont Blanc itself is the highest point in Western Europe, but this particular peak tops out at more than 12,600 feet, which is several million feet higher than I’ve ever been before.

  3. The last few years have seen a total onslaught of climbers up Mont Blanc, resulting in overcrowded peaks, trash-strewn trails, and the deaths of several inexperienced climbers.

  4. The Grand Couloir, a broad swath of open mountainside, is also known as Death Alley, for the rocks that come tumbling down without warning. Half of all the mountain fatalities in France occur on the sides of the mountains below us.

  5. Climate change has come at double the rate in Chamonix that it has elsewhere around the world, resulting in an explosion in the number of snow and ice avalanches. Which I can now attest to, personally.

  6. As the result of a collection of rogue paragliders, a recent law has been enacted to disallow them from landing anywhere near the peak of Mont Blanc.

  And with this last piece of fortuitous information, Nathalie has to stop feeding me facts long enough to steer our car into the berth at the top. I scramble out, breathless and a little headachy, but with a rush of sheer delight at the sensation of solid earth under my feet again.

  Because I’m her lone passenger, Nathalie takes a moment to step out with me onto the platform. The view is magnificent. It feels less like being on top of the world than being perched high on the blue-white canine tooth of some ancient beast who, for the moment at least, is too busy gaping at the view to eat me.

  Nathalie zips up her puffy vest and lifts a practiced arm to sweep across the panorama.

  “Welcome to the peak of Aiguille du Midi,” she recites, only a little robotically. “The paths are still mostly packed snow, and are safe as long as you stay within marked boundaries. Explore all you like, but you must take the car down by fifteen hundred hours, yes?”

  “I’m not going back down,” I say, and show her my ticket. “That is, I need to get down the other way. The Italian side.”

  “Ah, schade!” she says, and rolls her eyes. “That Eric. He should have radioed me to say.” She gestures for me to follow, walks through the exit and points along a snowy path. “You need to take the gondola over to Pointe Helbronner. It’s five kilometers, wunderschön, across the Glacier de Géant. From there, you can get the Skyway back down.”

  I take a deep breath. “A gondola and another cable car?” I ask quietly, desperately wishing I’d listened more closely to Eric’s explanation at the bottom.

  “Yes,” Nathalie says joyfully. “It is your lucky day, hey?”

  * * *

  —

  And, in fact, while I never do manage to catch my breath the whole time, she turns out to be completely correct. The gondola ride is as wonderful as described, and holds a handful of German tourists, having made an early start from the Italian side. As we sweep across the glacier, my eyes are glued to a jagged blue-black crack on the surface—a crevasse with a faint trail leading to it, but nothing on the other side. Beside me, the two youngest of the tourists—eight or nine years old, by the looks of them—whoop joyfully as the gondola bumps over the first tower and sweeps out across the unblemished blanket of white filling the enormous valley beneath us. It’s impossible not to smile at the children’s enthusiasm, and dragging my eyes away from the thoughts of death in the deep, I realize I have been shamed into enjoying myself.

  We are so high that, above my head, the sky is showing me a side I’ve never seen before. It begins as a crystalline blue that darkens through navy to almost indigo by the time I crane my neck all the way back. Around us, the rippling coverlet of white is broken only by the jagged peaks, poking through the snowline as far as the eye can see. The sun beams down like a searchlight overhead—a warm deity, benevolently overseeing us miniature, meaningless specks beneath.

  Nothing like a mountain range to deliver a sense of perspective, is what I’m saying.

  By the time we reach Pointe Helbronner and prepare to descend the Skyway down what has now become Monte Bianco, I’m feeling quite embarrassed about my earlier panic attack. As the two children leap eagerly aboard the enormous Skyway car, their mother leans over to me.

  “Apologies,” she whispers in a thick German accent. “Their papa is ice-climbing today, and this was all I could think of to keep them entertained.”

  I smile at her and follow her on board. “Anything to keep them off the computer games, right?”

  She looks puzzled. “No—no—they wanted to go with him, but I couldn’t face recoiling all the rope again today.”

  So, there is that.

  Though this is also a two-part journey down, the Italian cars are even larger than the ones on the French side, and the ride is comparatively smooth. This car rotates as it travels downward, and this time, I remember to take a few shots for my Insta page. Unlike the route up, I can see tracks in the snow beneath us, visual proof that Nathalie’s stories were not just intended to frighten a nervous American.

  Near the end of the ride, a mammoth, rainbow-striped balloon floats by, close enough that I can see two people, heavily bundled up, inside. We all stand near the window as the children leap up and down at the sight, cheering with delight when the operator fires their burner, and the balloon shoots suddenly upward, before floating away.

  At the bottom, the car slows to a crawl so that we can all step out. As soon as my feet are on solid, less alpine ground, I aim straight for the receptionist to ask about the avalanche on the other side of the mountain. She confirms that all trains are delayed, and then points me toward a tourist booth for more information. But before I can get there, a serious-looking man in uniform steps up to meet me.


  “Papers, please.”

  Flustered, I hand him the envelope of papers from ExLibris. He pulls the pages from the now-crumpled envelope, glances through the paperwork, and then hands the whole thing back to me in a messy pile.

  “Your passport, per favore,” he says, holding out his hand.

  I’m guiltily aware that it was likely the motion of our particular cable car that set off the avalanche, but—the police?

  “I’m so sorry,” I begin, but he sighs and waggles his fingers at me, so I pull my passport out of my wallet and hand it over.

  “I was only riding on the gondola. I don’t really know what happened. Perhaps the motion of the car . . .”

  Ignoring my babbling, he marches toward a counter marked ‘Polizia.’ I follow on his heels, but he steps behind the counter and slams the low door closed between us. He punches numbers from my passport into his computer, and I’m trying to remember what I know about Interpol, when he leans across the counter.

  “Grazie, senorina,” he says, and hands my passport back. “Welcome to Italia. Next!”

  Behind me, the German lady passes across a handful of documents. I sidle out of the way, and pretend—not for the first time—that I knew what was going on all along.

  I start to slide the papers back into the envelope, when I stop, frozen. Both pages are mostly covered not only in languages I don’t understand, but also alphabets. The Egyptian visa is identifiable by the pyramid stamp on one corner, and Arabic script. The Indian visa, too, is written in what must be Hindi, but luckily also in English. Outside, a shuttle bus gives a last-call honk on his horn, but I can’t take my eyes off the three English words typed near the top of each of the papers in my hand.

  Dominic Makana Madison.

  chapter twenty-three

  IMAGE DETAIL: Italian Slate Roof

  IG: Romy_K [Courmayeur, Italy, March 28]

  #ARailJourneyResumed #FirstClassFabulosity

  47

  It takes a late bus trip and a long cab ride to get me from the base of the Skyway cable car to the train station. It’s so cold; there is frost on the slate roofs of the houses we pass. By the time I get there, the doors to the station are locked and the place is entirely empty. Even the platform is deserted—not even a security guard to gaze at me suspiciously. In the end, I drop my envelope onto a bench under the overhang, pull my hoodie over my head, and fall asleep with the envelope as my only pillow.

  * * *

  —

  It’s light when I awaken, but barely. I’m not sure if it’s the sound of raised voices or the cold that jerks me awake. My fingers are warm enough, stuffed inside the pocket of my hoodie, but my toes are solidly numb. I sit up in time to see a security guard rousting some old guy from under a pile of cardboard further down the outside platform. Above his head, red LED lights traveling along a display board click over to read 6:03. My neck has developed such a solid kink from sleeping on the bench, I can’t turn my head to the left at all.

  I’m desperate for a toilet, but even more so for information. Stamping my feet to bring the feeling back, I scoop up my envelope, wipe the sleep out of my eyes, and try to look like someone who has just arrived at the station. As I walk over toward the security guard, the conversation has gotten louder, but I can’t pick out a single word. The old guy who had been sleeping rough under the cardboard catches sight of me, and extends his splayed hands out in my direction before replacing them pleadingly on his own chest.

  The implication is unmistakable.

  The security guard turns to look at me, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. He’s a trim, tiny man, perhaps five and a half feet tall.

  “Avete dormito bene?” he says in a sarcastic tone.

  I adopt my most innocent expression. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italian. Has the Brindisi train been through yet? I have an assigned seat.”

  The guard rolls his eyes at me.

  Cardboard Guy’s triumphant smile is half a dozen teeth short of a full complement. “Americana!” His breath makes me stagger back a few paces.

  “Ticket?” the guard demands in English, holding out a hand to me.

  I shake my head. “You don’t understand. Everything I own is still on the train.”

  He rolls his eyes theatrically. “The train that has not yet arrived?”

  Taking a firm grasp of my upper arm, and a similar grip on Cardboard Guy, he marches the two of us across the concourse.

  “Wait!” I try to pull my arm out of his grasp, but my shoulder doesn’t really work due to the stiff neck. “This is a mistake. I’ve got a seat on the Brindisi train, I promise you!”

  Meanwhile, Cardboard Guy clings to his tattered box as the guard hustles us along toward a door marked “Stazione Capo.”

  “Uno momento,” the guard snaps at me impatiently. Since he hasn’t got a free hand, he kicks the door with the toe of his boot, none too lightly, twice.

  There’s no answer from inside the door, but a voice from behind us calls, “Scuzi!”

  We all turn to see a tall, handsome man striding across the concourse. He has the bearing of a soldier and is immaculately turned out. His shoes are so highly polished, they reflect the overhead lights, and I could shave my legs on the creases in his uniform trousers.

  By this time, more of the public are wandering through, including one woman who curls her lip at me before marching over to open a tiny coffee kiosk.

  “Problema?” says Debonair Officer. He’s wearing a flat-topped cap similar to that of the Kindly Station Guard back in Chamonix, and is exuding a definite Oscar Isaac vibe.

  Except taller. And more Italian.

  He sweeps his hat off as he nears, tucking it under one arm.

  “My name is Ramona Keene,” I say hurriedly. “The stationmaster in Chamonix said he would contact you?” I add, “Por favor?” and hope it’s close enough.

  Debonair Officer offers us all a gleaming smile, and reaches into an inside pocket to retrieve his cell phone. Without a word, he rapidly scrolls through the messages, and then, oddly enough, holds the screen up beside my face.

  “You are indeed,” he says, in perfect, swooningly accented English. “Ramona Keene.”

  I peer at the screen, which he obligingly tilts toward me. On his phone is a screen grab of the most repellant-looking creature I’ve ever seen. Windblown hair in a rusty tangled knot, face red and swollen from crying. Not a speck of makeup, apart from the streak of day-old mascara trailing down one cheek.

  “Oh my god,” I mutter. The fact this picture exists leaves me feeling worse than being arrested with Cardboard Guy.

  Who am I kidding? The person in this picture deserves to be arrested with Cardboard Guy.

  I try smoothing my hair behind my ears before dragging my attention back to Debonair Officer.

  “My esteemed French colleague forwarded me all your details,” he says soothingly. “The tracks have been cleared, and your train is due shortly. Your personal items have been collected for safekeeping by the conductor on board. Your seat is still waiting for you.”

  For a moment, I forget all about the screen grab and the clump of hair that won’t stay tucked behind my ear. Tears of relief spring to my eyes, and without thinking, I clutch the sleeve of his uniform. “Thank you so much,” I say, at least a dozen times in my terrible bodega-Spanish. “Gracias, muchas gracias.”

  Before he can reply, the air around us begins to rumble gently with the sound of an oncoming train. Debonair Officer escorts me to the correct platform, trailed by the cranky security guard and Cardboard Guy.

  As the train pulls up, the stationmaster delicately extricates his uniform sleeve from my clutches. “Your seat awaits, signorina.”

  “My seat?” says Cardboard Guy, in terrible—but hopeful—English. “I with she.”

  And my heart breaks a little when Debonair Officer lo
oks at me inquiringly.

  “Have I missed something . . . ?” he says, but Cranky Security Guard comes to my rescue. Without a word, he snatches up the folded cardboard, tucks it under his own arm, and marches my would-be travel companion away.

  Seconds later, the familiar, if a little sleep-deprived face of the train conductor appears, ready to hustle me back on board. The voluble flow of apologies pouring from his lips leads me to understand that he feels at fault.

  I begin to tell him it was me who dropped the envelope, but the words die on my lips as he leads me to a first-class cabin. My suitcase and daypack are there, with the phone in the front zipper pocket where I left it.

  “To make up for your troubles, mademoiselle,” he says, sweeping out an arm.

  The cabin has a Futurama vibe, with beige walls and ceilings and a zesty zigzag pattern extending across the seat cushions and throw pillows.

  Because yes, there are throw pillows. Lavender-scented.

  “This—must be a mistake,” I stammer, as my better self takes hold of my speech centers. “Isn’t this first class?”

  The conductor beams at me. “It is indeed, mademoiselle. Premiere class, private. The rest of the journey takes place in daylight, it is true, but a word from you and I will make up the bed, so you may catch up on your—beauty sleep.”

  This is first class at its finest. The temptation to lie down on one of these softly padded couchette cushions hits me like a punch to the head, but I make one last, half-hearted attempt at clarification.

  “Monsieur, I didn’t pay for this,” I mutter, gingerly feeling the luxurious fabric of the tablecloth with one finger. “Are you sure . . . ?”

  “Absolument,” he says before I can even finish my sentence. “Bonne journée, mademoiselle.”

  And he is gone.

  I bounce across and lock the door behind him before he can change his mind. Then I do a final scan through my things to ensure all my possessions are indeed present, before succumbing to the temptation to check if the crisply encased pillows are as soft as they look.