The Personality of War by John Bryson

Author:John Bryson [Bryson, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Military, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science
ISBN: 9781922219244
Google: z7u5zQEACAAJ
Publisher: John Bryson
Published: 2014-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

WE ARE TO MEET ERICH at the top station. Herr Genscher checks his watch. ‘If we are not too late. Young men are impatient.’

A sudden darkening of the windows and we are docking into the terminal. While the Cabine still sways, the skiers stream out onto the platform to the clatter of colliding skis. A pretty American, a young matron, drops her mitten underfoot. Before she can bend the mitten is gone, lost between the platform and the table-car. Her husband is more worried about her capacity for good humour. ‘Don’t look down there, Honey,’ he says, ‘it’ll only upset you.’

‘It was the colour,’ she says. She is dressed from head to feet in candy pink. ‘I hope you realise it was the exact colour.’

Outside the terminal the sun is bright. The air, brittle and pure, pains the nostrils. Skiers are everywhere. T-bars to the higher slopes are busy. The towlines lift a fresh pair of skiers unerringly every 8½ seconds here, in silhouette against the glare, as if they were strings drawing out duplicates of the human form stamped from a roller. Lines of them stretch out of site, tense and fanatical.

Everyone from the Cabine has gone except the pink American woman who lost her mitten, plodding back to the station to demand some action by the authorities. Herr Genscher can’t see Erich anywhere around. ‘Perhaps he has gone to the bobsled,’ he says, ‘I am a few minutes late.’ But the excuse doesn’t entirely cover a faint embarrassment. He will ski to the bob run, and snaps into his skis.

‘Look,’ he points. Over the peaks flies a hang-glider. ‘A brief good weather, and out they come.’ At the rolling report of the alpine cannon, set on the half-hour these mornings to explode avalanches, he turns again. ‘Take care. This is a dangerous winter,’ he says. ‘Auf wiedersehen.’

The glider doesn’t seem to have moved from its precise point in the sky. A bright thing, from here, of fabrics and struts. He has leapt, evidently, from some sharp cornice high in the Corvatsch. How his breath must freeze. From there he can see into Italy, and his gloves creak as he twists his perilous controls.

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