The Lonely Skier

He gave a convulsive, agonised heave with his hands and fell headfirst from the window, a human torch, his whole body blazing furiously. He hit a drift of snow beyond the slittovia platform. A cloud of steam rose from the spot. The flames were instantly extinguished. A great black hole was burned in the snow.

‘The poor devil!’ Joe said. He was standing beside me, half-dressed. ‘Is that damned contessa of yours mad?’

‘I think she’s dead,’ I said. ‘Finish putting on your clothes. I’ll go and see if there’s anything we can do.’

Another piece of the roofing went as I made my way to the head of the slittovia. Sparks and steam rose high into the night and were whipped away by the wind. Carla’s body was huddled in the snow close to the platform at the top of the sleigh track. It was quite still. The scarlet of her ski suit glowed brightly in the lurid light. I turned her over. Her eyes stared wide out of a face covered in wet snow. There was a patch of blood in the hollow her body had made in the snow. A bullet had shattered her shoulder. Two more had struck her in the chest. The stains were a darker red than her ski suit. She was dead.

I crossed the platform then and made for the dark hole where Mayne had fallen. His body lay right below the spot where the fire was fiercest. Great gouts of flame were licking through the broken gabling. The wind was driving the fire through the wooden building, fanning the flames so that they looked like the exotic petals of some fearful jungle flower, writhing in horrid carnivorous ecstasy. One glance at Mayne told me that there was nothing to be done for him. His body was a charred and blackened mass, lying in a pool of melted snow. It was twisted and unnatural. And where the clothing had fallen away from one arm, the unburned flesh was pock-marked with shot. His had been an unpleasant death.

Joe joined me then. ‘Dead?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘Nothing we can do. Better go and get your cameras. I’ll give you a hand.’

Joe did not move. He was staring up at the flaming building. There was a crash. The whole gable that had roofed Mayne’s room seemed to crumple. We scrambled back through the snow just in time. It collapsed with a roar. The flames licked round this fresh wound with increasing fury. Sparks flew and were driven into the night. A set of beams, charred and eaten by the fire and still blazing, fell across Mayne’s body. They stood for a second, upended in the snow. Then they keeled over against the side of the building, their bases hissing and blackened, the upper ends still flaming. The wood of the hut flooring caught and began to burn. ‘Better hurry, Joe,’ I said.

But all he said was, ‘Christ! What a film shot!’

‘What about Aldo and his wife, and Anna?’ I said, shaking his arm.

‘Eh? Oh, they live downstairs. They’ll be all right.’

found them round the back, dragging their belongings out into the snow. At least, the two women were. Aldo was wandering about helplessly, wringing his hands and muttering, ‘Mamma mia! Mamma mia!’ I imagine he felt pretty sick at having helped Carla to escape.

We got Joe’s gear out and dumped it in the snow. It was whilst I was doing this that I suddenly remem bered the skis. Without them it would take me hours to get down to Tre Croci. I stumbled round to the front of the building. My heart sank at the sight of it. The whole front was ablaze now. Half the roof was gone and where the staircase had been the upper storey was nothing more than gaunt, blackened beams pointing flaming fingers at the moon. The door of the machine-room stood open as Engles and Keramikos had left it. It was already blackened with the heat and beginning to smoulder. The flooring above the concrete room was alight and the supports all round it flaming. At any moment the whole structure might collapse on top of it.

I rolled quickly in the heat-thawed snow till my clothes were sodden. Then, with a wet handkerchief tied round my face, I sloshed through the melting snow and in through the black, gaping doorway. The inside of that concrete room was like an oven. It was full of smoke. I couldn’t see a thing. I stumbled over the pick Engles had used to batter in the door and felt my way to the corner where we had put the skis. Several fell as I touched them. But the clatter they made was scarcely audible above the roar of the flames overhead. I felt along the warm concrete wall with my hands and found a bundle still tied together. With these over my shoulder, I stumbled through the red gap of the doorway, out through the blazing pine supports and into the cold, sodden snow.