Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South (18 page)

Tschamut heard little of this. Its life of herding and harvesting went on as ever. And in its church, no water but that from the Bull Spring was ever thought good enough to be made into holy water again....

The White Chamois

Il mal ven a cavagl e va vi a pei.

Misfortune arrives on horseback and leaves on foot.

(Raetian proverb)

The road approaching Mustér from the westward was wide, descending gently in broad curves from the shoulder of the Tujetsch hill on which the houses of Mompe Tujetsch perch. Once down the hill, it wandered from side to side through the rich green plain. All that plain was a patchwork of fields scattered with brown houses, clustering together as they approached the two great square grey towers of the Abbey, north of the town. It was a calm place. No one living could remember any enemy coming  from the great south-running Lucomagno pass. This land was under the protection of the prince-Bishops of Chur: it was their chief larder, their second library, and their western gate, and they watched it closely.

On that spring morning a young man, a chamois hunter by his clothes, trudged down the road through Funs village outside the town. Behind him, led on a rein, walked a small grey donkey piled with six chamois skins—an excellent haul, folded outside in to spare the fur.

Three streets ran through the middle of Mustér; the young chamois hunter followed the route that led to the middle one. The market place was a space three roads wide, cobbled for its most part, with a
binario
down the middle. Stalls were set up and half sold out already, for the Mustér market started before it was light.

“Mattiu,
beinvegni,
Mattiu!” one of the stallkeepers shouted at the chamois-hunter, waving. The young man turned his red-kerchiefed head, grinned, and led his donkey over.

“
Bien di,
Sievi,” said the hunter, grinning at the florid man in his leather apron. “What, ready for more already?  I had thought I’d try Hendri this time.”

The stallkeeper spat good-humoredly on the stones. “He’ll cheat you like he did the last time.”

“I wouldn’t call it cheating,” Mattiu said. “You weren’t buying that day. Your own fault.” The hunter began to undo the knots on the leather straps that held the bundles on the donkey’s back.

“Don’t know where you’re getting these,” Sievi said, unfolding the first hide the hunter handed him, stroking the pelt. “No one from here seems to have shot one in a month.”

Mattiu shrugged. “There seem to be plenty there. I whistle for them.”

“Know a few who wouldn’t mind learning that whistle,” Sievi muttered. “Two each, Mattiu.”

The hunter burst out laughing. “And you said Hendri cheated me!” He reached out to take the last pelt back.

“Mattiu, I can’t do better—”

“When nobody else has been shooting any?  Never mind, Hendri will—”

“Oh, never mind then, two and one!”

“Two and
two
.”

“I can’t—”

“You’re going to sell to the Abbot for four. Never mind, I’ll go see the Abbot myself—”

“
Fudi!
”

“I will, Sievi. Him, or Hendri. Come on now.”

Sievi scowled. “Oh, well, two and two.” They struck hands on it. “Ow!  Where did you get a grip like that, a runt like you?”

“Skin enough of these beasts,” Mattiu said, smiling, “you’ll have one too.” It was their old joke, verse and response: no deal between them would have been complete without it.

Sievi counted out the money. “Where to next, Mattiu?”

The young hunter shrugged. “North, maybe,” he said. “Heard a story about the white one, by Alp Russein.”

Sievi laughed out loud. “Nothing there but dragon’s bones, my lad. Chamois don’t go there. Certainly not white ones.”

“You said there weren’t any chamois by the Buora glacier, either,” said the hunter, still smiling. He patted the pile of hides.

“You were
there?  Ridischen!
” Sievi crossed himself. “There are dead people walking around there!”

“Oh, then you won’t want the hides after all—”

“Get out of here and spend your money,” Sievi growled. “Reckless young pup.”

Mattiu coiled the leather straps, stowed them on his donkey’s pack. “Drink later tonight, Sievi?”

“After supper, aye, if herself lets me out.
Tgau,
Mattiu.”

“
Tgau.
”

The young hunter wandered off through the market, stopping to look thoughtfully at a pile of Talian lemons at a fruitseller’s stand. “Nice young fellow, that,” Sievi said to the stallkeeper next to him when the hunter was out of earshot. “Crazy, though; doesn’t care about his skin, the places he goes to get these.”

“Not afraid of ghosts, I guess,” said the other stallkeeper, a bell-saddler.

“No. Crazy, as I said. Good hunter, though. Hope he doesn’t find out
how
good, or he’ll raise his prices.”

A wind ran through the marketplace, flapping the awnings. Over by the fruitseller’s stand, the young hunter smiled, strolled on.
Another few months,
  Mariarta thought, as the wind breathed Sievi’s words in her ear, 
and I’ll start asking him for more.

It had been six months since Mariarta left Tschamut: a bitter, difficult winter, spent mostly in the abandoned herds’ huts on one alp or another. They had fireplaces (for the herds used them for cheesemaking in the summer), so with dry wood, snow melted over a fire, and skins for bedding, it was possible to at least survive in the huts, if not ever to get completely warm.

Mariarta had often gone hungry, for the weather was sometimes so bad, even the chamois refused to go out; her hunger, worse than usual because of the cold, made her swiftly use her stores of dried meat. Over time she learned to manage her stores. As she brought home more skins from her hunting, staying warm became easier even without a fire. And the hunting itself was no problem. Any time that the chamois
did
venture out, Mariarta could infallibly shoot them.

To her surprise, Mariarta had not been lonely. She
had
been terrified, for the first month, that some hunter would come upon her and either try to take her back to Tschamut, or betray her disguise. After a while the fear lessened, for few hunters were out in this dreadful weather. Gradually Mariarta relaxed enough to enjoy the mountains, which had always seemed somehow threatening and barren to a villager. Only once during that winter did she actually weep for loneliness—on Christmas eve, when she knew that below her, lights shone in all the windows of Tschamut, warmth and singing dwelt by its firesides, and children were sneaking into the sheds to hear the cows talk about what would happen in the next year. Mariarta wept for the thought of her house, which might have all the lights in the world in it, and a fire right up the chimney, but would not have the two most important sources of warmth. They were in the churchyard, under the snow....

It was a bitter time, but mercifully brief. The next day food had to be shot as usual; Mariarta went about her business, finding some solace in the fact that she was alive at all. When she had been growing up, it had been assumed that no girl or woman could have lived alone in the mountains in wintertime; not even Sontg Margriata had tried
that
.

When the weather started to break, Mariarta knew she would have to leave the huts before the herds came. This  frightened her. It seemed likely that the first townsman who saw her would know her for a woman and denounce her to everyone in sight. All the same, she was determined that this should not happen. She was not big in the chest, which was a help: a tight linen binding under her shirt made her look no different from many men of her height. She was not as broad in the shoulder as some, but she was young: no one would think her size odd. She didn’t seem of an age to have a beard, either. Mariarta would not cut her hair—the memory of how her mother had loved to comb it always got between her and the shears. But many hunters that Mariarta had seen wore their long hair bound in a kerchief,  and everyone wore hide or fleece hats during the cold weather. The hot summer weather, when everyone stripped, would be more of a problem—but at such times Mariarta could be in the mountains, in the solitudes where not even the herds went, because no grass grew there.

When the
föhn
first started to blow, in the beginning of March, Mariarta took her courage in her hands, made a roll of chamois pelts, and left the hut on Alp Rondadura where she had been staying, making her way to the great road leading  from the Lucomagno Pass. Down she went to Mustér, trying hard to look like just another traveler. She was shocked to see how no one paid her the slightest notice until she got into the market place. Then Mariarta’s aching back was gratified, for the pelts sold fast. Had she come a month earlier, Sievi had told her cheerfully, she could have made twice as much, because of the scarcity of hunters mad enough to be out at such times. He had then given her more coin money for her pelts than Mariarta had seen since her father last paid Tschamut’s grass-penny: he asked for her business next time, and asked her name. “Mati,” she blurted, not ready for the question, and blushed fiercely: but “Mattiu” was what Sievi made of it, since it never occurred to him that he wasn’t talking to a man. By the end of the conversation, “Mattiu” she had become, from somewhere up the hills on the other side of Ursera. Mariarta had gone off in search of the town’s inn, stunned by the easiness of it all. She still felt as if the word
femna
was branded on her forehead.

Mariarta had not intended to stay in the inn—just to eat there: the thought of a chicken properly roasted over a kitchen fire had been making her half-mad for the last month. But in the next few hours Mariarta’s courage burgeoned as she discovered that no one thought she was anything but a young man, slightly mad to be out hunting so early, certainly brave and strong, and a skilled shot (for Sievi came into the inn later and bragged about the quality and number of the pelts Mariarta had brought). He might have been doing it to drive their resale price up, but Mariarta didn’t care—the praise, after a long winter without another human voice, was like wine to her, and went to her head. She ate and drank with the townsmen by the big fire, and no one thought it odd when the cheerful, modest young hunter (how he blushed when you praised him!) went off to bed early, after only a couple of cupfuls. “Just like a mountain man, up with the sun, gone with the sun,” they said to each other. When Mariarta insisted on a basin of water with which to wash privately in the room, it merely fastened her new
persona
tighter (“These upcountry people, they’re so modest, they won’t even let you see them pee. No, really!”).   

She had been back to Mustér three times now, each time with a bigger load—for before leaving town after her first visit, she went to one of the local farmers and bought a donkey, a small broadbacked creature with a mischievous look in its eye. Mariarta added to the price a half-soldi for shed-room for the donkey that winter. For the spring, summer and early fall she would have a stronger back than hers to carry the pelts of the chamois she would be shooting. She would be able to put away a pretty sack of coin by the fall. Then—

There Mariarta’s planning failed her. But it would be a long while yet before she would have to make any decisions. Meanwhile it was enjoyable enough to be free, to have money in her pocket, and nothing to do but what she pleased. Now she made her way  to Il Cucu, the old white-stuccoed inn that stood to one side of the town’s central street, giving Catsch the donkey to the yard-boy to stable.

The place was full of tradesmen already finished with the day’s selling, as well as townsfolk and town-farmers who were through with the morning chores and had time to spare for food and gossip. Mariarta made her way to the huge fireplace, sat herself  on a nearby bench.

Turté, one of the kitchen girls, came over to Mariarta and greeted her with a smile. “Well, how hungry are you today, Matti?” she said. This was getting to be an old joke too: the kitchen girls laughed that such a slender young man should have such a huge appetite.

“A chicken’s worth at least,” Mariarta said, “and what else have you got?”

“Barley soup with cheese, coneys baked in milk and pepper,” Turté said, “and fried dumplings and bread dumplings with onion.”

“The soup, if you would. And a pitcher of the nice white wine.”

“Only the soup?  Not the coney too?”

“Maybe later,” Mariarta laughed. Turté laughed too and took her broad blond self away, swaying her hips under the long black village girl’s skirt as she went. It had taken a while for Mariarta to understand why the kitchen girls took such good care of her, and seemed to feel safe flirting with her. During her second stay here, she had watched the way the men in the common room tended to treat the girls—shouting things at them that made it sound as if the girls weren’t chaste, and pawing them. A breeze wandering in from the kitchen brought Mariarta their anger at the gibes—and their praise of the modest young mountain boy who
didn’t
treat them so. A gem, worth taking care of—for who knew who might catch him some day?  Mariarta had at first been shocked at this consequence of disguising herself, which she hadn’t foreseen. But now she simply smiled at their flirting, and went on treating them as she would have treated any other woman she respected: which pleased the kitchen girls well.