Climbed a mountain today in a steep mist. We had to cross a lake to get to it, this was from Lucerne, shared a table on board with a godfather and grandfather and their little charge, who had unbelievably long eyelashes. After his biscuit and orange juice he grew sleepy, the godfather pointed, showing me, “See? his pupils get smaller,” and when they handed him his favourite thing, a green handkerchief called Noushy, he made a point of the corner of it and prodded himself thoughtfully in the ear with that. Then he brought it to his opposite palm and touched himself gently, thoughtfully several times in the middle of his little pink palm with the handkerchief point; then back to the ear; to the hand.
All four of us were laughing at him in the gentlest possible way. They said, he always does this: Handkerchief in the ear, handerchief in the hand. The little boy’s nickname was Noushy, too. What a solemn little fellow.
At the far side of the long and complicated lake that covers it seems several counties, and incorporates a steep-sided volcanic-island-looking outcrop that appears as if it would house a villain from James Bond in an eyrie reached only by helicopter, we reached a tiny town like a picture. Having late lunch there after our descent we saw a freshly married couple get off the same boat and start up the hill towards the only hotel, wheeling one small suitcase. She was still carrying her bouquet but had changed into a chic red frock matched with hot pink spike-heeled shoes. The bell of her hair swung forward every time she looked down at her flowers. At the souvenier shop they paused to talk to an elderly lady and then the bride tucked her hand under the groom’s arm and they climbed upward again.
Upward, upward; windward, snowward. Most of our climbing was done by train and part of it was done on foot. The train is scarlet and shiny, groaning and steep. A series of steel teeth run up the centre of the line to prevent the loaded car from sliding backwards. We got out and walked into a mist that raced down the sides of the mountain exactly as cold air snakes out of a fridge. In the mist we passed a large group of botanists standing with heads bowed as they listened to their group leader, who had crawled under the fence to grab a flower, describing something green and rare. Or something common and brown, I couldn’t tell which, to me Swiss German is an impenetrable dialect. Higher up we passed a woman in sturdy walking boots but dressed in immaculate white pants and a spotless white shirt. We passed many couples on alpenstocks, the cleated walking sticks you use on steep hills, wearing serious but also immaculate hiking gear. So many cows crowded round the dairy that was shaped like an after-ski chalet their bells clattered like a Tibetan or Bulgarian choir. My friend said, the farmer knows the sound, he can tell if one bell is not sounding. On our way back down from the sightless summit, where we had sat for an hour watching mist spurl round the base of the huge communications tower, one of those farmers left his house and picking up a sagging rucksack lying in the open doorway went striding down the hill, looking well-fed and cheerful. He lept the electric fence. We were both wishing we’d brought extra jumpers but this mountain man was dressed in surfer shorts and a dark blue t-shirt. In the tunnel into the summit that leads, mysteriously and lightedly, to a great double-doored lift that brings you up inside the giant restaurant and hotel, it was so cold I wanted to suck on my fingertips. I remembered touching the icy wet wall as we walked into a hole cut in a glacier when I was ten. It wasn’t so cold as that but the chill of forboding forbad me to wander any farther into the leaden heart of this mountain, I had to turn back towards the light.
On the restaurant terrace I watched a woman who looked like Yootha Joyce smoke a cigarette after her meal. Her husband didn’t smoke and it was pretty evident from the way she took in the smoke that this was the love of her life. Her lips pursed on the orange cork-patterned filter sucked and fondled at it so slowly, so intently, I almost felt had she not had a hold of it with her long fingers the entire cigarette would have flown into her windpipe. It was like she was finally breathing. “Please fit your own mask before helping others.” The movement of her cheek muscles, langorous and strong, made me think of the little boy Noushy who had fallen asleep on the ferry.
After the ride back down and our lunch we walked around the pretty foreshore. The Rigi, the mountain we had been on, is called by the Swiss “queen of mountains” and is where in 1903 I think the surveying process began. They built a marker there and from it measured to another mountaintop, and then a third, and then they triangulated. Now they have mapped out all of the surrounding peaks and beautiful etched steel landscapes showed what we would have seen had we been able to see anything. A sign cut into a steel plate fixed on the ground said, Sydney 16520km, with an arrow.
The train down was filled with elderly people, many of them German. The town at the bottom is like a clam growing at the base of a mighty pier. Evidently people honeymoon there. The red and white striped awnings and terraced cafe feel so 1950s I kept fantasizing Sophia Loren was about to saunter around the corner, or maybe Frank Sinatra. It felt like Monaco. In the foreshore park a semi-circle of chairs faced a three-walled corrugated iron shed. A trio was playing, tiredly, dispiritedly, and on the concrete apron in front was an overdressed lady slowly spinning her plump son, chivvying in a sing-song voice, as though making a bear dance. The music was awful. Saccharine and slowed. As we walked past I said to my friend, It’s like the world’s dreariest private function. Writing that, now, I add in my head: I don’t mean all of Switzerland.
