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Synopsis
"Ice and snow
gave birth to me."
These words captivate
Viola, a young
The man "born of
ice and snow" remembers nothing of his past, just an inner voice telling
him to have a second go at life. He lay
naked and unconscious on a glacier in the Austrian Alps. His rescuers named him Ertsie,
reminiscent of Ötsi, the prehistoric mummy found once
in that area.
Viola chances upon a
peculiar way to set Ertsie free, so he would travel
the world to discover his origin and his future mission. Several times, Ertsie is tempted to forget about his past and to start a
new life - but a nagging suspicion of having left a family behind drives him on
and on. Viola's and Ertsie's lives tantalisingly ally and sunder for a whole year until Ertsie's second life traumatically collides with his first!
The story is told by a
remarkable woman, who is herself transformed by associating with an unusual man
and his mystery.
Chapter 1 (of 58)
“Ice and Snow gave birth to me,” he said, in
German.
I stared at the man. He didn’t look like a nut case. His grey-blue eyes looked at me frankly; his
nose stuck out audaciously. Life’s struggles
had framed his chin and mouth with deep lines.
Silver grey streaked through his thick, dark, wavy hair. Fleetingly, the evening light spilled golden
glow over it. He was not older than
perhaps forty.
He pointed towards the glacier, “I began life up there.”
“Cool,” I said, wondering what sort of joke he was trying on me.
“Literally,” he quipped, without a smile.
“You speak with an American accent,” I blurted out and then asked
sheepishly: “
He sat down the tray on which he was gathering dirty dishes from tables
on the terrace of the mountain chalet.
“I know, I don’t speak German like an Austrian. Odd, isn’t it? After all, we're in the Austrian Alps and I'm
the dogs body of this chalet.”
Then he looked at me expectantly, almost like a child: “Which part of the
I blushed and felt annoyed about it.
Switching to English, I regretted: “I'm sorry. I’m from
“Schade! (Pity!). Would you believe that I
can't answer you in English, though I understand you perfectly?”
I was twenty-four years old and considered myself a mature woman, with
the body and the mind to prove it. I used
to get upset when someone called me a “girl”.
People claimed I looked very young, perhaps because I was slim and had
short hair. Having just finished my
horticultural studies, I had been eager to go for my “overseas
experience”. Now here I was, in
The high altitude chill of the late afternoon drenched the air on the
chalet terrace. A cloud, billowing
across the mountain crags, spat out the sun for a few moments and golden sheen
jumped on our surroundings, wantonly touching things. A party of four who had been chatting at the neighbouring table rose and prepared to leave. I looked around. The terrace was almost deserted. I checked my watch. If I wanted to catch the last cabin of the
funicular down to the valley, I would have to leave soon.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” the man continued. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Viola.”
“Lovely name. It suits your
pleasant personality.”
I blushed again and cursed myself for it. After all, he had made this compliment
blandly, unsmiling, matter of fact.
Peculiar!
A big woman appeared in the darkness of the chalet door. Her silhouette almost filled it. “Ertsie,” she
called: “Aren’t you coming?” - and dived back into the hut.
"Ertsie?
You've got a strange name!"
I remarked. Then I sneered:
"Do you really want me to believe that crap about starting life on the
glacier!"
"That's right. I remember
nothing but ice and snow. My story is
strange and short.. I may tell you later."
The big woman poked her head out again: "Ertsie,
we NEED you!"
He excused himself and followed the bossy woman. The silence around me was only needled by the
distant humming of the funicular cables.
I looked at my watch again. I
would have had to run now and yet - I lingered.
It was as if this man had cast a spell over me and I felt a powerful
urge to listen to his story. I had no
immediate commitments, so I decided to book myself a bed in the chalet. This decision changed my life. I would not only hear the man’s secret, but
also follow him on his journey to discover his past.
This is the story of a recent year in my life. However, it is also the story of Ertsie, or
rather Ötsi, as this name is spelt in German. Much of his side of the story I did not
witness, but intend to describe the way I perceived it, when he told me. I'll plait these stories together, just like
they were intertwined in real life. My
imagination may carry me away at times and Ötsi might
have kept some details to himself.
Nevertheless, I believe this will be a fairly accurate account of what
happened.
For aeons the European Alps have been
standing essentially unchanged. Glaciers
have crept down into the valleys and retreated, many times. Wind and rain have lashed peaks and flanks,
causing little change compared with the impact of human technology that
happened within a geological blink of the eye.
In winter, monsters of steel creep up the highest slopes, flattening the
snow. Skiers, ant-like, speckle the
slopes. Cable cars and mountain lifts
take endless streams of people right to the very tops.
From their small gondola, Hans and Rupert saw snow fields and rocky
ridges slowly glide past, as the funicular was moving them towards a high
mountain saddle. A few skiers and snow
boarders dotted the groomed part of the slopes.
Both men were in their prime of life.
Tanned weather-beaten faces betrayed their outdoor lifestyles. They wore ski attire and their skis stuck up
outside the gondola in a separate locker.
“It’s the end of the season. We
won’t be able to ski right down to the hut, Hans.”
“I don’t mind walking a little.
God, how often have I climbed up here, skies on my back. Now everybody gets pulled up in a fraction of
the time...”
The gondola swayed in a gust of wind.
“Hey, Rupert! Oh, I can’t see it
any more.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I think I saw a body in the snow.”
Rupert laughed: “There are other people on the slopes, you know!”
“It didn’t move and looked strange.”
“An animal carcass?”
“Perhaps.”
The snow felt soft once they skied off the prepared piste.
“D’you still want to search for the
mysterious corpse, Hans? The snow’s like
porridge. So if we want to gain speed,
we better head straight downhill.”
Hans did not answer, just motioned to Rupert to follow and pushed off
sideways.
Under the line of the softly purring funicular the men stopped.
“The thing was almost straight below us,” Hans said.
They skied downhill in short turns.
The glacier sloped down steeply, then more gently. Wind eddies had created bumps and grooves
that would easily hide objects. The men
stopped.
“Nothing!” Rupert said. “It may
have been an illusion. Or an animal that
has since disappeared.”
“It would’ve been a large animal, the size of a chamois. See that bluff over there? With the long icicles? The snow’s piled up along it. Something could be stuck in there.”
“You want to walk back up? Don’t
be silly. Forget about this phantom,
whatever it was.”
“Wait for me if you like, Rupert.
I’ll have a look anyway.”
Hans started stepping up. Rupert
followed, shaking his head in protest against his mate’s obstinacy.
When Hans reached the bluff, he stopped abruptly and whistled through
his teeth. In the snowy trough along the
bluff, there lay a man. He was almost
naked and badly bruised.
“He’s dead!” said Rupert aghast.
“Look, he hasn’t even got any boots on!”
The body was cold and without any sign of life.
“A doctor should examine this guy.
Anyway, he’s got to be flown down.”
Hans pulled out his mobile phone and rang the Bergrettung, the mountain rescue organisation.
Shadows jumped through the chalet’s guest room lit dimly by a lamp that
dangled from the middle of the ceiling.
Logs flickered in the fireplace.
Its smoke mingled with that of somebody's pipe. Under the lamp, several men sat around a
table, playing cards. I could not make
out much of their noisy conversation in thick Tyrolese. The sturdy hut mother whom I had first seen
in the chalet door had joined them. Behind the milky veil of the fogged-up
window pane next to me, the view was changing colour. A luminous night blue was flowing around a
tooth-shaped rock tower. Its snow-bare
spots were turning black and patches of snow bathed in the pale sheen of
moonlight.
I leant towards Ötsi across the table. “You were lying in the snow naked?” I asked incredulously, my voice husky from
excitement.
“I had some underwear on me. If
this hadn’t been dark, I doubt that anybody would have noticed me.”
“How can anybody survive such conditions?”
“Medical staff talked of a miracle, although they didn’t think I had
been lying there long. My heartbeat had
virtually stopped. At first, nobody
thought, the revival procedures would work.”
“How did you get to the place of your accident?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you mugged?”
“On a glacier?? It has been
suggested, but nobody seriously believes it.
They found alcohol and drugs in my blood.”
“Hm...
what does this mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your real name?”
“I don’t know. Rupert and Hans
thoroughly searched the spot where they found me and were unable to find any
personal belongings. Rupert, who happens
to be the caretaker of this chalet, started calling me Ötsi. It's the nickname given to a prehistoric man
found not far from here on a glacier, some years ago.”
“Without a name, without documents you’re nobody! What do the Austrian authorities say?”
“They’re waiting for my recovery.
I'm still under surveillance.
Meanwhile, Rupert’s employing me in the chalet, unofficially.”
“Is there nothing at all that you remember?”
Ötsi shook his head. “There’s just
one thing. As I came to, I was aware of
a voice...”
Raucous laughter drowned Ötsi’s words. The card players looked at each other, banging their cards on the table. One of them called: “Der Lotter!” (that rascal!). A glass came thumping down so that some beer
slopped out of it. Somebody brushed the
cards into a heap and shouted: “Let’s start over again.”
“There was something like a voice,” Ötsi
repeated when the noise subsided. “It
filled me, kind of reverberated through my body. I didn’t distinguish any words, but I just
knew. I was to have another go at
life...”
I covered my arms, trying to hide my goose pimples.
“Magic!” I stammered. “Magic!
This is almost like reincarnation!
Perhaps, there were major problems in your first life?"
Ötsi nodded, pensively: "Yes, and now I'm allowed to put right
whatever there was. I don't know what
sort of person I was. Perhaps, now I’ve
got to find out what life’s about, or let's say, about my own purpose in
life."
"D’you think, life means different
things to different people?"
"I wonder. Humankind may
share a goal, but it's possible that we all may need to find our individual
purposes in life - and accept them."
One of the men tossed another log into the fire. Flames shot up. A red flicker darted through the room and
across Ötsi’s face.
I stared at him, eagerly: "So, what are you going to do?"
"Maybe, I should find out who I am, then explore my options.. No,
maybe the other way round: first experience life. I'm scared about discovering my past."
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