"Kim Stanley Robinson - Kistenpass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

I continued to walk uphill, and jogged from time to time, but whenever I saw a car coming up the road I
turned around and stuck out the old thumb. I had hitched a lot in my twenties, but never in Switzerland,
and trying it felt a little crazy. Most of the cars that passed me were filled with guys in their Swiss Army
uniforms, and they stared at me in a way that made it clear I was right to feel that way. Their looks made
me wonder if there was a regulation forbidding Swiss men on Army duty from picking up hitchhikers. If
there were, I was out of luck; compliance with regulation was a fundamental part of the Swiss character,
as I had learned on many occasions. One time, for instance, I was playing American football with my
Swiss baseball teammates and three or four Americans, a pick-up game at the big Zürich sportsplatz
where we played baseball, and the Americans were gathering the huddles and calling plays that
degenerated into chaos the moment the ball was snapped, lots of mayhem that was never allowed in
soccer, so that everyone having a blast, except suddenly all the Swiss quit the game and started walking
off the field. When asked what was up, they explained that it was six P.M. and the sportsplatz closed at
six, every day, even in the summer when the sun was still halfway up the sky. We Americans were
amazed at this, and suggested we continue to play anyway, as it was a stupid rule and there was no one
there to close the park, or even notice it was being used. But this was inconceivable to the Swiss guys,
they just shook their heads and kept on walking, until one particularly rowdy American named Richard
started shouting,”What? What? What is this? What kind of Nazi shit is this?” I thought the Swiss guys
might get angry at that, but they only gave him the same cold look that I was getting now from the guys in
the cars zooming by, a look immensely distant, as if from a world no non-Swiss could ever understand.

As I trudged up the road I recalled a Swiss friend trying to explain that world to us, one night after
dinner. Every year on the night before Christmas, she told us, Sami Claus came to the door of every
home in Switzerland, accompanied by his sidekick the Böögen, a tall creature draped in a big black bag
and carrying another black bag in his hands. Sami Claus would then consult with the parents about their
children’s behavior in the previous year, and the parents would produce an account book they had
supposedly been keeping to record their kids’ behavior. If the children were reported as being good,
then they would get a gift from Sami Claus; if they had been bad, the Böögen would snatch them into his
bag and take them off never to be seen again. The children were brought to the door to witness all this,
and the youngest ones believed it was real. “And that,” our Swiss friend concluded, “is why I hate
Switzerland forever.”



So I had given up all hope of catching a ride, and wasn’t even turning around to face the passing cars,
when a Mercedes slowed ahead of me and came to a stop. I ran up to it; the driver was a woman, and
she had two kids in the back seat. I thanked her as I got in, wishing I weren’t so sweaty, but she didn’t
seem to notice. Off we went.

My Swiss benefactor was blond and good-looking, and seemed capable and sympathetic. In my
hitchhiking days whenever women picked me up I pretty much fell in love with them immediately. Now I
was remembering how that felt, and kind of feeling it again. She was saving my day. She asked me
politely where I was going, and in my broken German I told her about my disrupted morning, and my
plan for the afternoon.

“Kistenpass!” she repeated, surprised. (“Keesh-tee-pahsss!”) But, she said, glancing at me as she drove,
the cable car above Breil was a ski lift only. In the summer it was closed. Very few people ever hiked
over Kistenpass.

That is bad news, I replied.