The Angry Mountain

by Innes Hammond

I think Hilda knew how I felt for she held my hand all the way, her fingers gripping mine with a tightness that seemed to be trying to give me strength.

We were a queer cartload. The mule moved very slowly, Hacket holding the reins. Maxwell was coming round and moaning with pain under — his blankets. Lemlin was unconscious, but Tucek, propped against the side of the cart, had his eyes open. They stared vacantly in front of him, the pupils unnaturally large. The little Italian boy was playing with Zina’s hair while she lolled like a courtesan against Reece, her skirt rucked up to show her naked thigh, a dreamy smile on her lips. It was insufferably hot and the sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades.

I remember as we left the villa a little mound of ash by the front door with a swarm of flies buzzing over it. I didn’t have to ask what it was, for there was a hand sticking out of the ash. Roberto’s grave started in my mind a picture of the twisted wreckage of a plane and the flies buzzing in clouds about our swollen bodies. It was all mixed up in my mind with the flies that had crawled in swarms over my smashed leg up there in the Futa Pass so long ago.

I felt my mind drifting over the edge of reality into fantasy. Hacket was swearing at the mule and I found myself identifying myself with the animal’s reluctance to reach its destination. I wanted to go jolting on into infinity, just moving steadily on and never reaching the plane. And then I saw Sansevino watching me curiously. I could see him following the antics of my mind with a cold, professional interest. And then for a moment anger and hate blended in the sweat of the heat and I wanted to be transported in a flash to the cockpit of the plane and go roaring out over the lava with a wild shout of laughter as I proved to them I could do it.

We were down by the rows and rows of planted bush vines now and Hilda’s fingers clutched more tightly at my hand. ‘Where shall we live, Dick?’ Her voice sounded a long way away as though I was hearing her talking to me in a dream. ‘Can we have a house by the sea somewhere? I have always wanted to live by the sea. I think perhaps it is because my mother was a Venetian. The sea is in my blood. But the frontiers of Czechoslovakia are all land frontiers. It will be nice to live in a country that is surrounded by water. It is so safe. Dick. What sort of house shall we have? Can we have a little thatched house? I have seen pictures—’

So she went on, talking about her dream home, trying to fill my mind with thoughts that lay beyond the nightmare of the present. I remember I said, ‘First I shall have to get a job — a job in England.’

‘That will not be difficult,’ she answered. ‘My father plans to build a factory. He has patents, and the money for the factory—’ She stopped then. ‘What happened to the things that were in your leg?’

I remembered then and my mind seized with relief on something immediate and practical. I leaned forward and grabbed Sansevino by the arm. ‘You took something from my leg — up there on that roof. Give it to me.’ I saw cunning and hesitation in his eyes. ‘Give it to me.’ My voice was almost a scream.

He put his hand in his pocket and for one awful moment I thought he’d got a gun and I half rose to fling myself at him. But his hand came out with the little leather bag and I remembered he hadn’t got a gun. He handed it across to me. It was quite light and as I shook it the contents rattled like a bag of dried peas. I undid the neck of it and poured the contents into Hilda’s lap. Zina’s eyes opened wide and she leaned forward with a hiss of excitement. It was like a stream of glittering fire as I poured it on to Hilda’s dust-caked skirt. Diamonds and rubies, emeralds, sapphires. They lay there winking and glittering, all the wealth of the Tucek steelworks condensed into that little pile of precious stones.

I was angry then, angry because Tucek had committed me unwittingly to smuggle his wealth out of the country. He’d come to my room that night with the intention of asking me to help him, and when he’d found me drunk he’d seen my leg and slipped the little leather bag into the hollow shaft. He’d realised that if I didn’t know what I carried I’d be more likely to get through. But he’d no right to do it without my permission. He’d committed me to a danger that I hadn’t known about.