In the Mountains

In the mountains Albert found it very easy to tell one day from the next. When he had been younger, a teenager, he had lived six years in the city because of his father’s job. At night, with a girlfriend and some other kids, he had gone to the bars and drunk into the morning. After, he would go to bed at sunrise. Sometimes he would go to school, still half-asleep, and it seemed that he lived in fractions of days that he could not properly separate. The faces of his girlfriends, friends, parents, and above all the teachers had passed quickly and vaguely through his mind when he was young, leaving nothing. Then, days had gone fast and senselessly.

But after he arrived at the cabin in the mountains, he thought that everything had changed. Every night the sun went down around the same time as the day before. He always went to bed when he felt tired in the evening, and always slept through to the next day. If he did not feel tired at night he would look at his clock and make sure that he went to bed before eleven. His clock was extremely big, and he did not like to defy it. But days when he did not feel tired came very rarely. Those were days when he felt most lonely and so he liked to go to bed early and try to sleep. Sometimes his cat slept on top of his bed, and then Albert felt less sad.

In the morning he always got up quite early and drank a small, weak coffee. He suspected that if he drank more coffee than that it would damage his health. Albert worried a lot about his health because he wanted to live for many more years alone in the mountains. After his coffee he went to the bathroom to piss and wash. Then he got his brushes and two canvases, and went for his walk through the mountains. Albert knew there must be a great many places to sit and paint the landscape, so often he walked a long way through the mountains to reach a new one. He thought that every time he was painting something different from the picture before, but it was always a lie. Albert liked to lie to himself about many things. He thought that he was an artist, and sold his paintings to a man from Birmingham that visited him every month in his cabin. The pubs and restaurants bought the paintings afterwards from the man. In the villages nearby almost all the restaurants had some of Albert’s paintings, and the artist had a great reputation in the area. In fact, everyone thought that Albert was a tremendous artist, especially because he lived alone in the mountains and because he only sold his paintings to one particular shop. People said that the man who owned the shop was Albert’s only friend. But Albert did not agree because the man only associated with him for business reasons. Usually no-one mattered to Albert; he had fallen in love with his solitary life. When the art seller visited him Albert pretended that he knew everything about artists and art, but he did not understand why he did that. He thought at least that no-one mattered to him.

In the morning of a day in Autumn, Albert climbed a hill near to his house so he could paint another picture. While he climbed the hill he thought about the lake that he planned to paint again. The lake was very deep and clear - in the mountains everything was clearer and cleaner, especially the air. Everyone liked the paintings of this lake and Albert had three pictures of it in his cabin. Whenever he feared that his pictures did not count for anything he looked at one of those pictures.

After half an hour he arrived at the top of the hill. He had previously placed a chair in a cave nearby and now he retrieved it. He set up his canvas and started to paint the lake. How lucky, he thought, that the clouds had cleared from the sky because the light fell much better without them. He started with the hills behind the lake because he found it easier to paint the water within a determined space. He needed two hours to paint the hills but fortunately the sky did not change very much in that time and he was able to finish them.

Then he needed to paint the lake; he started with the green and grey paints. After a few minutes, he had a shock. A girl of about twenty years, appeared on top of a boulder next to the lake and started to undress. She had not noticed Albert yet because he was sitting quite far from the lake. She wanted to swim in the water and, naked, she dived very deeply. She disappeared underneath the skin of the water for twenty seconds and came up in the centre of the lake. Albert had forgotten his picture and was staring at the girl. What a shame that he was so old! thought the painter. He would like to chat with her and swim with her in the lake, but he was too old for those things.

He looked again at his painting and he did not like it. He realised that it was already exactly the same as all his earlier pictures. He knew that someone or some restaurant would buy it in any case, but it was the same. The girl provided the only difference in the lake this time and he did not know how to paint her. He could not remember how. She had ruined the painting. So Albert put his brush down on his easel. Instead of painting he stared at the girl’s chestnut-coloured hair. Again he felt the need to talk to her but could not. He could only sit in his hard chair and look at the clear, deep water. It attracted him but at the same time he felt very old and did not know for certain that he could still swim. His arms were weak, but he believed his legs more capable. He carried on sitting and did nothing. After thirty minutes the girl went away but Albert stayed and thought more about his paintings. He decided that he would not paint any more that day and he walked slowly back home. He felt too tired to move the chair back to the cave.

There he drank another coffee and sat alone in the sun all through the afternoon. Sitting there, he watched a few goats on the peaks opposite him. He liked the goats but only from a distance. He worried - when they came nearer - that they would eat his flowers, leaving his garden empty. He had a lock on his gate but at times forgot to use it. He resolved to finish his painting of the lake the next day. Really, he did not feel much like doing it at all but supposed he would feel better the next day.

In the morning he returned to the lake and had another shock. The girl had already dived into the water and now swam around the centre. Besides this she had pitched a tent on a small plateau only a few metres from Albert’s chair. Worse, the artist realised that the girl might even have sat on his chair. Albert ran to his house and found his hunting shotgun then raced back to the water. He was exhausted but the girl had not left. He pointed the gun with care and shot the girl. After, in the calm, and parallel to himself, he started to paint again.