The Magus - John Fowles [115]
red Greek shoulder-bag, and pressed on him two packets of airline cigarettes. "_Esychia_," the muleteer said. He and Alison stood interminably shaking hands, while I took their photo. "_Esychia, esychia_. Tell him I know what he means." "He knows you know. That's why he likes you." At last we set off through the firs. "You think I'm just sentimental." "No I don't. But one packet would have been enough." "No it wouldn't. I felt two packets fond of him." Later she said, "That beautiful word." "It's doomed." We climbed a little way. "Listen." We stopped on the stony track and listened and there was nothing but silence, _esychia_, the breeze in the fir branches. She took my hand and we walked on. The path mounted interminably through the trees, through clearings alive with butterflies, over rocky stretches where we several times lost the path. As we came higher, it grew cooler, and the mountain ahead, a damp polar grey, disappeared completely into the cloud. We spoke very little because we seldom had breath to speak. But the solitude, the effort, the need I had continually to take her hand to help her when the path became, as it frequently did, a rough staircase rather than a path--all broke some of the physical reserve between us; instituted a sort of sexless camaraderie that we both accepted as the form. It was about six when we came to the refuge. It was tucked away above the tree line in a goyal, a minute windowless building with a barrel-vaulted roof and a chimney. The door was of rusty iron, perforated with jagged bullet holes from some battle with the Communist _andarte_ during the Civil War: we saw four bunks, a pile of old red blankets, a stove, a lamp, a saw and an axe, even a pair of skis. But it looked as if no one had stayed there for years. I said, "I'm game to call it a day here." But she didn't even answer; simply pulled on a jumper. The clouds canopied us, it began to drizzle, and as we turned up over a crest, the wind cut like January in England. Then suddenly the clouds were all around us, a swirling mist that cut visibility down to thirty yards or less. I turned to look at Alison. Her nose had gone red and she looked very cold. But she pointed up the next rock-strewn slope. At the top of it we came to a col and miraculously, as if the mist and the cold had been a small test, the sky began to clear. The clouds thinned, were perfused by oblique sunlight, then burst open into great pools of serene blue. Soon we were walking in sunshine again. Before us lay a wide basin of green turf, ringed with peaks and festooned by streaks of snow still clinging to the screes and hollows of the steeper slopes. Everywhere there were flowers--harebells, gentians, deep magenta-red alpine geraniums, intense yellow asters, saxifrage. They burst out of every cranny in the rocks, they enamelled every stretch of turf. It was like stepping back a season. Alison ran on ahead, wildly, and turned, grinning, her arms held out, like a bird about to take wing; then ran on again, dark blue and jeans blue, in absurd childish swoops. Lykeri, the highest peak, was too steep to be climbed quickly. We had to scramble up, using our hands, resting frequently. Near the top we came on beds of violets in bloom, huge purple flowers that had a delicate scent; and then at last, hand in hand, we struggled up the last few yards and stood on the little platform with its crowning cairn. Alison said, "Oh my God, oh my God." On the far side a huge chasm plunged down two thousand feet of shadowy air. The westering sun was still just above the horizon, but the clouds had vanished. The sky was a pale, absolutely dustless, absolutely pure, azure. There were no other mountains near to crowd the distance out. We seemed to stand immeasurably high, where land and substance drew up to a narrow zenith, remote from all towns, all society, all drought and defect. Purged. Below, for a hundred miles in each direction, there were other mountains, valleys, plains, islands, seas; Attica, Boeotia, Argolis, Achaia, Locris, Aetolia, all the old heart of Greece. The setting sun