We went through the door towards the kitchen. Our first sight of Aldo was a head popped through the servicing hatch in the kitchen door. It was a hairless head, sparsely garnished with a few grey tufts and both scalp and face gleamed as though freshly polished. The eyes had a dumb look and the mouth smiled vacantly as though apologising for the rest of it. The man was an ape. A moment’s conversation with him convinced me of it. His smile was the only human thing about him. His brain was primordial. Joe Wesson said of him later that he was the sort of man who, if you told him to take away a plate and his hands were full of glasses, he would drop the glasses to pick up the plate. I asked him to show us to our rooms. He began to gobble at us confusedly like a turkey. His face became red. He gesticulated. Though his Italian was almost unintelligible, I gathered that he had received no booking. I told him to ring up the Splendido. I had seen a telephone at the end of the bar. He shrugged his shoulders and said he had no room anyway.
‘What’s he gibbering about?’ Joe asked. And when I told him, his cheeks began to quiver with anger. ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Tell the oaf to take his head out of that ridiculous hatch and come out here where my toe can get acquainted with the seat of his pants. I’d be delighted to have an excuse to go back to that nice comfortable hotel. But I’m damned if I go down that slittovia again. Once is quite enough for one day.’
I opened the door that framed Aide’s face and he came out, looking scared. I told him that my friend and I were getting angry. He began to gabble Italian at us again. ‘Oh, to hell with it!’ Joe exclaimed. ‘Let’s have a look at the rooms. There should be six and I was told only two were occupied.’
I nodded and we tramped up the uncarpeted stairs, Aldo following with a flood of Italian. At the top was a long corridor. The rooms were little match-board cubicles leading off it. The first door I opened revealed an empty room. I turned to Aldo. He spread his arms and drew down the corners of his mouth. The next door I opened showed a room with the bed unmade and clothes strewn around. The third room was actually occupied. Aldo had rushed to prevent my opening it, but Joe had swept him aside. A short, neat little man with long, sleek hair turning grey at the temples and a face that looked like a piece of dark crinkled rubber stood facing the door as I opened it. He was wildly overdressed for a man living in the Col da Varda hut. He wore a natty near-dun-coloured suiting, a blue silk shirt and a yellow tie with red yachts sailing across it. He held a comb in his left hand and his attitude was curiously defensive. ‘You are looking for me?’ he asked in almost perfect English.
I hastened to explain. Aldo ducked beneath Joe’s arm and became voluble. It was a duet in English and Italian. The occupant of the room cut Aldo short with a gesture of annoyance. ‘My name is Stefan Valdini,’ he said. ‘This man is a fool,’ he added, pointing to Aldo. ‘He tries to save himself work by discouraging people from staying here. He is a lazy dog.’ He had a soft purring voice that was a shade better than suave. ‘Cretino!’ He flung the offensive term mildly at Aldo as though it were common usage. ‘There are four rooms vacant. Give the English the two end ones.’
I had expected Aldo to become angry — you can call an Italian a bastard and give the crudest and most colourful description of his entire family and he will do no more than grin, but call him ‘cretino’ and he usually becomes speechless with rage. But Aldo only grinned slavishly and said, ‘Si, si, Signer Valdini — pronto.’
So we found ourselves ushered into the two end cubicles. The window of Joe’s room looked straight down the trackway of the slittovia. Mine, however, faced south across the belvedere. I could only see the slittovia by leaning out and getting the drips from the overhanging snow down my neck. It was a grand view. The whole hillside of pines fell away, rank on rank of pointed treetops, to the valley. And to the right, above me, the great bastions of Monte Cristallo towered cold and forbidding even in the sunlight. ‘Rum place, Neil.’ Joe Wesson’s bulk filled the narrow doorway. ‘Who was the little man who looked like a pimp for a high-class bordello’) Behaved as though he owned the place.’
‘Don’t know,’ I said. I was busy unpacking my things and my mind was thinking what a place it was for the setting of a skiing film. ‘Oldest inhabitant, perhaps — though he certainly looked as though he’d be more at home in a night club.’
‘Well, now we’re in we may as well have a drink to celebrate,’ Joe muttered. ‘I’ll be at the bar. I’m going to try some of that red biddy they call grappa.’
