The Paper Men by William Golding Read Free Book Online

her mouth. Her large eyes became huge. She struggled to get out of the chair.
    “Can’t you see, you fool? She’s going to throw up!”
    Mary Lou threw up halfway between the chair and the door. Rick made a kind of triangular dash to the bar with glasses and to the door. Mary Lou disappeared through it. The manager looked dispassionately at the mess. He shouted through the open door at the back of the bar and, as if she had been waiting for the event, a fat, grey-haired woman emerged through it with mop and pail. Rick dutifully pursued Mary Lou to wherever their room was. I contemplated the sick with the detachment of a man who was drinking something even worse. I took my filthy mixture and wandered out of the hotel into the sunset. There were round metal tables (the same ones I always sit at) in the little square where one side was the hideous drop. I sat at the table I had sat at in, say, Florence, Paris, St Louis. Where was I? Moving, always moving. It was the manager of the hotel in Schwillen. I simply hadn’t covered my tracks. Next time—
    I got up, strolled a few yards up the path that led to the higher meadows and felt a deadly weakness. I was just able to reach my chair and table again. Time passed.
    Rick was sitting by me and talking. I didn’t know how long he had been there. He was sketching out the immediate future. There were said to be four splendid walks we could take. He would explore while I spent the day acclimating. He didn’t need to acclimate, having been used to heights all his life. They said that one of the walks involved a little scrambling. I sat back in the chair, nodding at what he said and my chin hit my chest.
    Mary Lou was coming down the path from the high, flowery slopes. She was talking about solid geometry and explaining the three fundamental curves of the calculus by reference to the immense cone of mountain that stood over us.
    Someone blew an alphorn, right there in the square.
    “Wilf? Sir?”
    I was the alphorn and blew myself again with another enormous honk.
    “Asleep.”
    I blinked back into the sunset. The station was absorbing a procession of Swiss, German, Austrian walkers. They all seemed as wide as they were high. Rick was laughing.
    “You said Mary Lou majored in math! Mary Lou!”
    “Dreamed I was an alphorn. Pretty girl. Congratulations.”
    “She admires you.”
    “She like me?”
    Pause.
    “Hell, yes!”
    “She play chess?”
    “Hell, no!”
    “Checkers?”
    “You’ll both be OK. By morning. By this evening.”
    “Dinner.”
    “Yeah,” said Rick baldly, “we’d like to have you eat with us.”
    I felt ever so slightly embarrassed.
    “This one’s on me.”
    The three of us appeared to be the only people staying at the hotel, midweek and out of season. At dinner Mary Lou remained pale and ate next to nothing. But Rick talked for all three. The walk he’d explored had the damnedest views. Truly inspirational. Streams, trees, the treeline, flowers. After I had grasped that we were going to walk tomorrow I ceased to listen and endured my preoccupation with Mary Lou instead. She didn’t seem much interested in what Rick was saying either. She stood up suddenly, so that oddly enough I got to her before Rick, who had been talking about the snowline. He took her from me and led her away. When he came back he apologized for her, which amused me all down one side of my face.
    “She’s enchanting, Rick. I thought it was a literary convention but, you know, when she feels faint she doesn’t go green and ancient—she just goes even more transparent.”
    “She said she wouldn’t go with us tomorrow.”
    “Doesn’t she like anything? I mean—”
    “You could say,” said Rick carefully, “Mary Lou isn’t physical.”
    “Cats? Dogs? Horses?”
    He blushed, a slow burn.
    “You were there, Rick, the two of you. Recently.”
    “It’s a place where you lived for a long time, Wilf.”
    I thought of the place where I had lived for a long time. The only