18
At thirty-two Martin put his foot for the first time upon the soil of his ancestors. He roamed through Zurich; mounted its narrow cobble-stoned alley-ways, stood before an overhanging house reading the inscription. “This house is three hundred years old.” The lives of Zwingli, Pestalozzi became familiar. He read ravenously the history of the town. He stood on the border of its blue lake, encircled with snow mountains, “A Turquoise on a white bosom.” Something stirred in him, an inward convulsion, like the sudden eruption of an extinct crater; he broke into choking tearless sobs. Martin, unknown to himself, had the Swiss temperament—a people without the gift of self-expression, a deeply religious peasant race, silent before the mystic beauty of their mountains. Patriotism, that misunderstood word, with its medieval clashing of swords, its uniforms, its medals, has no relation to the Swiss adoration of the soil. He worships his valleys, his lakes, his waterfalls; they are living to him; he has a rage for the mountains; he leaves his country to seek wealth, but he rarely stays in the stranger’s land; nostalgia drives him home; he must get back to the heights or die. Martin understood later why his grandfather went mad, why his father was wordless, why his mother died young.
He tried his Swiss on the portier of the Bauer au lac Hotel, a man of all-round information, a veritable encyclopædia of Switzerland, who could answer in the many languages of the cosmopolitan crowd, on its way to and from the mountains. Martin spoke a few words to him in his grandfather’s “lingo,” then said, “What am I speaking, anyhow?”
“Your dialect is Romontsch or Romance. Your people came from the Grisons.”
Then he explained how in the Middle Ages the Barons and Bishops had oppressed the people, and how they formed Leagues and fought for their freedom. The Grisons took their name from the “Gray League,” a heroic band of peasants.
Martin left Zurich by the early train the next morning; he sat the entire day gazing out of the window unconscious of the other passengers. A great moving picture shot before him—green valleys, velvet hills, beautiful grazing animals, brooks changing into waterfalls, cataracts dashing down dark ravines, mountains growing higher, higher. At Tarasp he stayed over night to connect with the stage-coach at daybreak, and spent the evening sitting outside with the guides, who told him of the Val Sinestra, where the bandits used to live in caves, deep down in the ravines, and smuggled wine over the border. Then they spoke in lowered tones of the danger of mountain climbing—of death—of miracles they had seen above in the mist, with their own eyes.
With the rising of the sun, seated beside the coach driver, Martin pierced the mountain passes; they stopped at a quaint hamlet.
“We turn here,” said the old man. Then he wished “Godspeed,” cracked his whip, and went on. The coach pitched from side to side, on a perilously narrow road, but the horses were sure-footed, and the driver, past seventy, had gone the same way for fifty years.
Martin drew deep breaths of the fragrant air; he looked about him. The houses were a mixture of old Swiss and Italian architecture—the protruding windows and little balconies were covered with bright flowers; in the distance he caught sight of a picturesque church and cemetery. He entered an inn with a swinging sign; a rooster flapping its wings. The spotless floors sprinkled with sand, the small counter with shelves of bottles, the peasant girl in the costume of the Canton—it was all so familiar. She brought him a glass of wine and a pretzel, smiling at his jargon. He remarked on the absence of men.
“They are ‘up there’ with the cows for the summer.” She pointed to the green hills, gradually becoming steeper. “In those little huts on the top they make the cheese which they send all over the world. In the winter the sun doesn’t come up very high; it is like a blue twilight here. The storms howl, the snow falls for weeks. When the peasant closes his eyes, the avalanche haunts him; if he awakens in the morning he is grateful to God.” The girl went on chattering in her soft “Romance.” “The doctor goes down to Croire in the winter, but our pastor stays with us. We have service here when the snow is too deep to walk to the chapel.” Then she put down the glass she was polishing, and went joyously to the door to meet a tall man, a gigantic peasant, with masses of thick gray hair falling to his shoulder. He was long past seventy, but showed no signs of age. His voice rang out stentorian, clear. He was warm, wiping the perspiration from his face with a large red handkerchief. He looked at Martin with keen penetrating eyes. Then said, “Good morning.”
“Oh, you speak English.”
“Yes, we have many English visitors. Our children are taught it in the schools.” He looked again, seemingly puzzled.
“What is your name?”
“Martin Steele. My people come from over here.”
“Steele.” He shook his head. “I know none of that name.”
Martin took from his pocket the bundle of old letters. One glance at them and the pastor’s arms were around him.
“I wrote those letters to your grandfather. I am his brother. You are not an American, you are a Swiss. Your name is not Steele, it is Staehli—Martin Staehli. The eldest of our family, for generations back, was always Martin.”
Martin felt a throb of joy; the blood of this fine old man with the head of a Roman ran in his veins. He had known only Aunt Priscilla, whom he wanted to burn.
“Come, I am going to take you home with me.”
Martin looked back at the Swiss “Madel.” In her red skirt and velvet bodice—an image of national womanhood.
They walked together down the hill, through the fields, past the little chapel and cemetery where they stopped. On the headstones he read again and again the name, “Martin Staehli.” He would bring his grandfather, his parents and lay them where they belonged, and he would lie there beside them.
The pastor looked up at the great mountain, already casting a shadow over the valley; even in summer the day was short. The night came early and lingered.
“We are not all here. My son was the best guide in the Canton. He was lost in a snow-drift up there.”
At the châlet with its black beams, centuries old, still strong, unyielding, he put his hand over Martin’s head and blessed his entrance into the home of his fathers.
Martin stood in the long hall, vaguely conscious of atmosphere. A cuckoo sprang out of an old clock, chanting the hour; a spinning wheel with threaded flax; new linen piled up; a living thing, that wheel, it clothed the people. Carved chests, plaques of fruit, birds cut out by the natives, when the country was Italian—everything in the room bearing witness,—a living story-teller of the lives and times of the vanished family. For the first time he felt the antique. He was swayed by a kind of psychic storm, like a rush of wind through the pass of a mountain.
The pastor at the door called, “Angela, Angela.”
A clear voice answered; she came down the path—a girl of sixteen, with bits of hay in her flaxen hair, a child-like look of wonder in her blue eyes, and something more—of mystery. Martin thought of Joan of Arc in the orchard.
On seeing Martin, she gave a quick impulsive cry. The pastor put his arm around her.
“What frightens you, Angela? It is my brother, Martin’s son from America.”
Angela extended her hand, but her warm radiance had vanished. “Come out in the sun, it is cold here.”
She brought mugs of thick yellow milk, brown bread, delicious chipped beef, then went again into the field and sat sorting out leaves from a basket. The pastor followed Martin’s gaze which lingered on the girl; she appealed to his artistic sense.
“Angela is a wonder child; she is not of our family. I found her one moonlit winter night in a snow-drift—a white angel. Since she came the village has prospered; the people are happy.”
Martin smiled: probably the child of some unfortunate village girl. The pastor read his thoughts. “She belongs to no one; she is a miracle-child. You don’t believe in miracles?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
A simple question, difficult to answer. He couldn’t express the longing, which from childhood had made him restless, unhappy—a longing for some other space, some other element. He couldn’t explain his agitation, his unbearable joy, when he saw those scenes of which his grandfather had babbled in incoherent broken bits. He answered conventionally.
“I wanted to see the place where my grandfather was born.”
The pastor grew very serious. “It was not a case of idle curiosity you were drawn here; Angela knew you were coming. I used to tell her stories of your grandfather, Martin Staehli. He was queer; had a streak in him of evil. He got into a brawl with a guide and killed him; he had to leave the country.”
“I never knew that,” said Martin.
“That’s why he changed his name. I wrote to him often, but he seldom answered. Poor Martin, he got very rich.”
Martin laughed bitterly. That almost uncontrollable instinct to destroy was his inheritance.
“Angela said the third generation would return home. She has the gift of prophecy and of healing. She cures the people of their ills. The cattle run to her for her herbs; there is a magic in them. She brews them with Prayer, with Love.”
Martin shook off a peculiar feeling; it was all superstitious nonsense, an insult to a man’s intelligence. He rose to go.
“You will stay here with us?”
“I’m sorry, but I must meet some friends. Where is the Val Sinestra Hotel?”
“A little distance from here, on the other side of the hill beyond the hay-field.”
Martin looked up at the straight stony walls of the big mountain.
“I’m going to climb that mountain,” he said.
The pastor smiled. “Perhaps, when you have had long practice; a man must train himself to climb.”
The pastor watched him as he went with quick uneven steps, stumbling here and there; he had no equilibrium. He’d never climb that mountain.
Angela was also watching Martin. The pastor put his hand on her shoulder; she started.
“He terrifies me; I am afraid of him.” She threw herself sobbing into the old man’s arms.