I bought two post cards and wrote them out of doors in the cold, livid
twilight. Then I asked a soldier where was the post-office. He directed
me. It was something like sending post cards from Skegness or Bognor,
there in the post-office.
I was trying to make myself agree to stay in Andermatt for the night.
But I could not. The whole place was so terribly raw and flat and
accidental, as if great pieces of furniture had tumbled out of a
pantechnicon and lay discarded by the road. I hovered in the street, in
the twilight, trying to make myself stay. I looked at the announcements
of lodgings and boarding for visitors. It was no good. I could not go
into one of these houses.
So I passed on, through the old, low, broad-eaved houses that cringe
down to the very street, out into the open again. The air was fierce and
savage. On one side was a moorland, level; on the other a sweep of naked
hill, curved concave, and sprinkled with snow. I could see how wonderful
it would all be, under five or six feet of winter snow, skiing and
tobogganing at Christmas. But it needed the snow. In the summer there is
to be seen nothing but the winter's broken detritus.
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