Blind Date (4 page)

The man spoke first, and the women quickly answered after him. As Levanter had suspected, they were minor functionaries, employees of the Moscow Ministry of Trade. The man offered his passport with a trembling hand, a gesture of utter servility and guilt. Levanter studied the document long enough to give the impression that he was memorizing the man's name, then turned away without speaking, as if he were disgusted by the sorry affair and eager to end it.

The cable car arrived at the midstation, from which point skiers either continued up on the PicSoleil gondola or skied down. The door opened. In the confusion of skiers pouring out, the Soviet trio scurried away.

As he went through the passageway to the gondola, Levanter saw the Russians sitting at one of the most secluded tables on the terrace. They nervously shuffled their passports and other papers, no doubt preparing themselves for the investigation that would await them at home.

For a moment he felt sorry for them and considered going over to apologize and tell them the truth, to shake hands with them and laugh at the masquerade in which they had all taken part. But he knew they would not laugh: he would only be frightening them more. They would then be convinced that a man who spoke perfect Russian and knew Soviet jargon must be an émigré spy for the CIA, donning still another disguise to find out more about them.

Then he felt ashamed and somehow unnerved by his deception. To his surprise, the short encounter with the Soviets had resurrected a part of himself he had believed to be buried, the enjoyment of having certifiable power. When he had terrified those three Russian mice, he had actually felt himself being transformed into a Soviet lieutenant colonel; no real-life Soviet lieutenant colonel could have carried it off better.

He promised himself to remember to tell the whole incident to Romarkin, his friend in Paris whose name he had borrowed. He could already imagine Romarkin laughing uproariously, repeating over and over, “And all I said was ‘Ya-ma-ha'!”

Only when he skied was Levanter able to recognize the subtle changes brought about by age. While his mind retained its ability to consider circumstances and issue commands, his body, which had once reacted automatically, was now frequently unable to respond
as expected. Refusing to acknowledge this breakdown, his mind kept supplying the images of past performances but, no matter how hard he tried, Levanter could no longer repeat them. He was becoming conscious of a division between what he knew he had done once and what he could actually do now.

For a boy who had not learned to ski until he was twelve and could practice only during school vacations, Levanter had shown considerable aptitude for the sport. By the time he was in high school, he had entered a few local ski competitions and collected some equipment as prizes. He loved being on the slopes and saved up his money to take lessons to become a certified ski instructor. This certification proved to be an asset.

To demonstrate to the world that pleasures once reserved for the privileged were now enjoyed by the masses, the Party had instituted a program of ordering peasants to the mountains for winter vacations about the time Levanter was a university student. Most peasants rarely left the agricultural flatlands, and few had ever seen mountains before. The twenty-four-hour railroad ride to the high-altitude ski resort often left many of them lightheaded, and a few older ones would faint or vomit as they stepped from the stuffy, overheated train into the thin, cold air. Overwhelmed by the towering mountain peaks that loomed like prison walls, the disoriented peasants would become querulous about everything from dizziness to dangers underfoot. They consistently refused to walk alone, even on the sloping village streets, for fear that they would lose their footing and plummet down the side of a cliff, rolling over and over all the way down to the valley. With arms tightly linked, small knots of these unwilling vacationers would be seen stumbling forward, trying to keep their bodies upright, always looking down at their feet, never up at the mountains. Many of them actually believed the mountains were man-made, like the massive government buildings they had seen on their obligatory visits to the capital, and they wondered why the government had built them so high.

The ski instructors were mainly sons of local artisans whose families had lived in the region for centuries. They had all been on
skis from the moment they could stand, and many of them were regional and even national champions. But skiing was all they knew. Their only other interests were drinking, playing cards, and seducing vacationing females. As children, they had gone to the local parish school to learn how to pray, write, and read, but most soon forgot what little they had managed to learn. None of the instructors had any notion of what “ideology” meant; few had ever heard of Marx or Engels; and all they knew about Lenin was that after his death Stalin began to take care of the world's working people.

This lack of knowledge made local Party authorities apprehensive. Since ski instructors had contact with the workers and these vacationers might return home with embarrassing stories about ignorant mountain men, the political consciousness of the ski instructors had to be raised. The authorities decided they needed a university-educated certified ski instructor at each resort to indoctrinate the local ski teachers. Since Levanter was qualified, the university released him for four months each winter to teach skiing to peasants and to conduct a biweekly class in ideology for his fellow instructors. He was also required to test their progress at the end of each one-month course; those who failed the simple finals twice in a row had their skiing instructorships suspended, and those who failed three times were fired. Levanter was to be the only judge of his students' ability.

During his first lesson, Levanter made a reference to the end of the nineteenth century. Someone asked how a person could tell when one century ended and another began, and no one in the class had an answer. In a class about Trotsky, they wondered how the same man who had founded the workers' state had so quickly turned into its dangerous enemy.

To keep their athletic standards as high as their newly imposed ideological ones, all the instructors had to compete every December and March. The widely publicized Ski Instructors' Championship combined downhill and slalom with jumping and cross-country races. The first time Levanter participated, he was the only skier not born in the region and his entry received a great deal of
attention. He felt he was in good shape and had ample reserves of strength. Confident of his stamina and form, he assumed he would place among the first ten or fifteen skiers in the meet.

At the start of the cross-country race he was determined not to tire himself in the first few miles. The forty-five participants soon stretched out along the course, and Levanter found himself skiing alone. Toward dusk he arrived at the finish line. The area was deserted: there were no judges, no press and no radio commentators, no other skiers, and no crowds. Levanter realized that he had come in last, but not a soul was waiting for him. He assumed he had lost his way somewhere during the race, and everyone must have thought he had dropped out. That night he talked with some of the others and learned to his dismay that he had not been lost — he was simply that much slower than all the other instructors.

In his class the next morning, Levanter began with a question. “What, according to Comrade Stalin, are the five factors that determine victory in war?” The instructors, intimidated as usual, sat in gloomy silence. “No volunteers?” asked Levanter, scanning the bored faces.

“The last volunteers died in the First World War,” someone shouted from the back row. The class guffawed.

“Let's be honest with each other,” said Levanter. “I no more enjoyed finishing the race so far behind you than you would enjoy being asked such questions on your final exam.”

To emphasize the confidential nature of what he was about to say, Levanter stood up and closed all the windows and locked the door. Then he moved his chair into the middle of the room and motioned the instructors around him.

“I am not a winner,” said Levanter, “but no man was born to be a loser. There are forty-five of us here, and there will be forty-five of us competing in the March championship. I won't mind if I finish forty-fifth, but I will mind if I finish hours after everyone else. Understand?”

The instructors nodded.

“While it would be hazardous for me to try skiing faster, it would not be hazardous for you to ski slower. Thus, for our mutual safety —
mine in the race and yours in the exam — I propose that all of you slow down so that I can finish the race within sight of the last ten racers. You have until March to think it over.”

The day of the March cross-country race dawned clear and windless, with crisp, well-packed snow. This last championship of the season was held during a holiday weekend and attracted unusually large crowds of spectators, including the capital's café society and the wives and children of government, Party, and diplomatic dignitaries.

In the early stages of the race, Levanter felt in great form; by the middle stretch he began to lose time, but discovered he was not alone. Each time he hit a rough patch and lost speed, the six or eight instructors just ahead of him slowed down as well. From time to time, he would see one of them turn to look over his shoulder and hear him shout ahead to the others, “I see him! I see him!”

Levanter again finished last, but this time he was only thirty seconds behind the forty-fourth contestant. Surrounded by reporters and fans, Levanter overheard a radio broadcaster telling his listeners that the skiing conditions must have been extraordinarily tough, since the winning time was almost an hour longer than the previous cross-country race.

Levanter liked skiing alone. Often he carried a small camera in his parka and stopped to photograph the dramatic high-mountain scenery that changed from moment to moment. One day he decided to ski the Aval, ValPina's longest run. For a mile the Aval offered a straightforward, gently sloping descent, although the top tended to be very windy because the glacier PicSoleil loomed alongside. At the foot of the initial descent was a narrow ridge, which opened onto a plateau just above the first of five downward slopes, all so steep that they made this one of the most challenging runs in the Alps.

When Levanter reached the plateau, he came upon four skiers slowly making their way down, moving in a winding course. One of them, a young woman dressed not in ski clothes but in a sheepskin jacket and woolen slacks, appeared to be having great difficulty. She was clearly terrified of the steepness of the slope below the plateau and of the run stretching before her. Each time she started to gain downward speed, she would try to slow herself by heading away from the dropline. Her momentum would carry her uphill, in a zigzag pattern, onto the side of the slope, where, in a desperate attempt to stop, she would throw herself down into the deep snow. Her ski bindings opened and released the skis, but the safety straps kept them attached to her ankles so the loose skis continued to strike her body. Levanter saw this happen several times, and he wondered how long it would be before she was seriously hurt by the steel-edged skis.

The three men with her wore regular ski gear and handled themselves competently. Levanter was close enough to hear that they spoke with pronounced British accents and to sense that they were annoyed by their companion's falls.

One time the woman fell into soft, unpacked snow. She was about one hundred feet above Levanter, but he could hear her breathing and moaning. With each move she made, the snow collapsed under her, yet she continued the struggle to regain her footing, as though afraid she would suffocate in the powdery depths. She appeared desperate as she squirmed and flailed like a wounded insect, unable to fit her boots back into the ski bindings.

Quickly, he pulled out his camera and took several shots of her snow-covered form. Then he photographed her companions. The three men first stared at him and then ignored him.

“Cheer up, dear, you're doing fine!” one of them shouted to the woman.

“Just lean downhill, go with the slope!” screamed another.

Finally, she managed to get to her feet. As the men were helping to dislodge the sodden lumps of snow from her slacks and coat, Levanter skied over and, without a word, photographed the four of them.

He smiled politely. “Beautiful day, isn't it?”

The men nodded uneasily.

“Do you ski the Aval often?” asked Levanter.

“This is our first time here,” one of the men answered.

“It's a lovely run,” Levanter commented. “Tough, but lovely.” He looked at the young woman. Her cheek was bruised, her forehead cut and bleeding. “And you,” he asked her. “Have you skied it before?”

“No. It's only my second day on skis, you know,” she added apologetically.

“Your second day on skis?” Levanter asked. “You mean to say that you only began to ski yesterday, and today you're on the Aval, at eleven thousand feet?”

The woman nodded, attempting a smile.

Levanter moved closer to her. “Tell me,” he said softly, “how long have you known these three gentlemen?”

She looked at them hesitantly, then at Levanter. “I met them skiing yesterday.”

“Yesterday! And, knowing that you can hardly stand up on skis, they brought you to do the Aval, one of the toughest runs in all the Alps?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I'm curious. Did they tell you that they expected you to kill yourself today?”

One of the men glided forward. “I say there, hold on,” he shouted angrily. “What kind of stupid question is that?”

Levanter disregarded him and continued to address the woman. “They didn't?” he said. “This is just the beginning of the run and by no means the worst of it. Surely you realize you don't stand a chance of making it alive.”

She listened without responding.

“Perhaps you didn't understand that each slope becomes more treacherous as you descend,” Levanter went on.