The Wool Unravels
Where the snow goes in the summer; the untethered souls of sheepdogs; practical uses for the bones of saints; the sheep canal; a convent at war...
The crazed flagstone path, leading to the front door of the house, was laid by Henri Weder during the 1970s. Half a century of seasonal freeze and thaw have reduced it to gravel. Only a few islands of paving remain. On warm days, his son, Vincent, likes to come outside with his coffee and stand facing towards the mountain, with his feet planted on a pair of the surviving stones. The alpine flowers – delicate stars of yellow pink and pale-blue – emerge around him, on winding stems, from the dry sea of grey crumb and quartz sparkle, their eyelash petals unfolding as they seek the light. Through the steam rising from his mug he watches the creep of winter where it has patched the green slopes of the mountain.
The moving sheet of snow is always in the place where the sun is at its strongest; a miracle of nature, the secret buried in the geology of the peak. That is what he used to tell the foreign backpackers when they asked him. By the end of the 1990s the lie had found its way into the travel guides. Recently it has drawn a new breed of independent tourist to his front door. They come right up to the house in four-wheel drive vehicles and set-up expensive camera equipment on the trail, as if they are filming for TV; always three or four of them; one in overall charge, pointing and issuing instructions. He does not like their air of entitlement; the way they refuse to take “no” for an answer; their empty, offhand reassurances:
“I do not want to speak on the camera.”
“We just want a short interview. We can pixelate your face out in the edit if you want.”
“We can use software to change your voice on the computer,” says the girl who is kneeling down by the open door of the vehicle, typing something on a laptop she has open on the drivers seat.
“Their aim is to make us look stupid, as they pretend to be our friends,” remarks Hannes, hours after they have gone. “I had to tell one them recently, if you put your arm around my shoulder again, I will break it.”
Jost both first nods, then shakes his head as he prematurely gulps down a mouthful of his sandwich.
“Even ten years ago it would have been acceptable to beat them. Now there are idiots in charge and it is no longer the case. You must not do anything that risks you being put in prison.”
On another day, one of the visitors gives Vincent a lecture on his nation's laws regarding filming and photography, while his friend stands one side filming the exchange on his mobile phone.
All of them want to go up the mountain; to film themselves in the snow. It is never framed as a request; always as the beginning of a negotiation that is regarded as a formality.
“Is there a guide who can take us?”
“Oh, and we will need some people, or some donkeys, or something, to haul our gear. But it's quite delicate, so we need guys who are going to be careful with it.”
“We cant pay you much, but I get, on average, one-point-five million views per video, so, you know it will kind of be good exposure for you.”
“Good for tourism,” parrots the young man behind the camera.
“It is private land,” Vincent tells them. “I do not own it. I have no control over anything that goes on up there. If you trespass, then you will be arrested. You may even be shot.”
“I looked up some of these people on the Internet,” reports Jost. “There seem to be thousands of them. After a while I stopped counting. Many of them are millionaires.”
“Or they pretend to be, I am not convinced,” says Hannes.
“Who is responsible for rewarding such foolishness?” says Anton.
“The trouble is life has been comfortable for too long. The last two generations have known no true hardship.”
“Then they will soon be in for a rude awakening.”
Recently, a trio set-up a high powered telescoped on a tripod on the trail in front of the house where the brothers all live. (They are not all brothers – some are cousins or nephews. There is one – Grock – who is unrelated to any of them, but who was taken in by the family).
“It's not snow, it's a big flock of sheep!” announces the young man as he stares into the eyepiece. “There is like thousands of sheep up there, all in one big herd.”
He presents his piece to the camera, his mouth frequently agape in feigned astonishment, his eyes widening beneath his manicured eyebrows: “Oh my god, you guys, you guys: At last the mystery of Mount ______ has been solved. You will never guess in a million years what I've just seen...”
“Why did we not just say it is sheep. It would have spared us a lot of trouble,” says Marc.
“Yet they are still coming even now,” says Vincent. “To look at the snow sheep.”
“We should take as much of their wealth as they can be convinced to hand over,” says Anton.
“They have no wealth; only the appearance of it,” says Hannes. “It is all a scam.”
No amount of money is worth dealing with these people,” says Vincent. He puts on a voice: “You guys, hey, you''ll never guess what...”
“You are one of them in disguise, I always knew,” says Anton.
Hannes tosses the stump of his cigar into the fireplace where it ignites the kindling.
“A show poodle in sheep's clothing.”
Another year has passed. Another flagstone in the crazed path has been fissured. A jagged Y-shaped canyon widens underneath the worn-down sole of Vincent's left shoe. It is the turn of Anton and Jost to live on the mountain. The unsheared sheep have joined them in their summer exile to the highland pastures.
Through an old pair of binoculars, Vincent can see the animals flocked together; an expanse of whiteness moving with the pace of an hour hand across grass slopes that drape themselves, like the folds of a woman's grown, down the southern face, softening the vertical ridges of rock. Sometimes he can make out the black specks of the dogs. Each one has an eagle shadow who he knows by heart – an aerial twin who he follows around all day. When these bird die, their dogs will seek out their bodies. They bury them with reverence, side by side, as if the concept of the graveyard has been encoded in their genes. For weeks afterwards they will be despondent, lacking strong purpose until they can be encouraged to bond with the shadow of a new bird. EU legislation forces the Brothers to run the dogs in four hour shifts. Vincent thinks, if they were allowed, they would run all day.
This morning, the crackle of his permanent earache mirrors the distant rumbles of thunder emanating from behind the mountain. Dr Pfyffer has told him that he would be a healthier man if he were to relocate somewhere closer to sea level.
“But then we would no longer see each other,” says Vincent.
In the afternoon, an unfamiliar doctor arrives, not for him, but for Anton who has fallen gravely ill. To administer to his needs, Dr Keller, the church surgeon, who is famous for having once operated on a former pope, has been summoned. Because Anton has spent most of his life at high altitude, the essential operation must be performed near to the summit of the peak. Vincent watches the Doctor's expression sour into discontent as Hannes counts out the money.
“It is too little?”
“It is all the same to me. What you cannot pay, will be paid by the church.”
Dr Keller's surgical tools are fashioned from the bones of saints. They purify the soul as they aid in the healing of the body.
“This scalpel is made from a fragment taken from the shin bone of St Leo. It never goes dull.”
“It is the same that you used on the Pope?”
“It is.”
Marc offers to take him up in the chairlift.
“It will not be serviced until next week,” says Grock.
“In any case I would prefer to walk,” says the Doctor. “I hear the mountain is beautiful at this time of year.”
After he is gone, Vincent says to Hannes: “It is only Anton with the legal power to hold Ursula at bay. Who knows what she will do if he is no longer around to stop her.”
“Body and soul become two separate things at altitude, says Marc. “One fares better than the other when it is closer to Heaven. The dogs know it. They know their eagles are a part of them; that they are the same being. When they die they are unified in the ground.”
It is the end of the summer. He has joined Vincent and Grock at the bottom of the slope, watching through binoculars as the herd pours itself down the mountainside along the sheep canal. It is a controlled stampede. There is a skill to getting the animals moving as one, in such a manner where none will be crushed and no legs will be broken. During the winter, the canals are used for bobsleighing and gully skiing.
“Jost has got them moving well,” comments Marc.
“On his last time he killed eight sheep,” says Hannes. “Twenty-one more had to be bolt-gunned.”
“Then he has learned.”
An hour later, the first of the sheep arrive ahead of the main flock. They are the fittest specimens, spurred to an unsheep-like gallop by the gradient. They enter the pen seemingly bearded, trailing their withered wool that wilted under the bright sunlight all season and is far softer than normal wool. After they have been sheared, they must be kept indoors all winter. The rising price of vellvilut makes the enterprise worthwhile. After all, who else will do it, other than the brothers and perhaps three or four other families who are also slowly dying out.
In the overflow pen, Hannes, along with the two boys he has recruited, is checking the feet of the animals for any hoof tint – specks of gold; sometime small nuggets, enough for a wedding ring. The mountain is full of riches but must be cracked open like a china piggy bank if they are to be taken out.
Now comes the shrouded body of Anton, borne down the mountainside on the backs of his shouldering flock. Jost has rigged a mobile pen that keeps some of the sheep close together, so he does not fall into the gaps. Vincent finds him with the binoculars and follows his progress until he his lost among the trees. He calls to the others, alerting them to the imminent arrival of their older sibling.
At 3 o'clock in the morning, the night air is filled with plaintive bleating. The brothers are weary from their labours, though all are still awake.
“It is friends calling out to each other in different barns,” says Grock.
“Only two dead in a flock of over 9000. A record,” says Marc.
Hannes raises his cup of mulled wine in what might be a toast.
“There are three dead.”
Eighty-seven kilometres south-west from the Brothers' house, Ursula abides in her penitent cell at the convent. Though she can never set foot beyond the gate without breaking her vow to God, the fate of mountains lies within her grasp.
Hannes visited the convent after Anton’s funeral. He stood on the marked flagstone outside the walls and called up to a solitary window. Sometimes the nuns will answer back, or they will agree to pass on messages. On this day there was only silence. He returned to the foot of the mountain bearing rumours of war on his tongue:
“A barman told me there is a schism within the holy order. I am certain it is the work of Ursula. He says that there are plans to construct a second convent alongside the original. She will require the large sums of money the mountain will provide.”
“A dragon will never willingly diminish its hoard,” says Marc. “It is a power-play against the church.”
Vicent takes up his coffee and wanders outside. For weeks now, the peak has been blanketed in white. A chill wind blows the frozen snowflakes, as though they are autumn leaves, where they have settled among the gravel. He watches a lone skier battling their way down the sheep canal. The powdery blasts of vapour issuing from the backs of the skis, in the wake of every turn, resemble tiny explosions going off. A sinuous trail of white cloud winds its way across the blue heavens; the bright sun alerting him to something that is earthbound, yet no less brilliant, winking at him from the flank of the mountain.
I mean no offense with this, but, sometimes I can't get through your posts. This one was NOT that kind. I liked that it is very imaginative but also spare and efficient. Every reader reads something different, of course.