A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin

father took a rifle from one of the soldiers. Embarrassed by his mistrust of the famous mountaineer, and by what he
knew the Germans would consider his overly Italianesque response, he understood that he had to make good on his stated conditions. Though he didn't train the weapon on the hut master, he loaded it, and the hut master heard the unmistakable sounds of a rifle bolt opening, a cartridge rising, the cartridge rammed into the barrel, and the locking of the bolt.
    Alessandro buttoned up his loden coat.
    "Do you want the hood?" his father asked.
    "No, I want to see what's around me."
    He was lifted up into the gondola and he positioned himself on the sheepskin that swaddled the trumpeter. They told him what to do, pinned a note on his back, and pulled a wooden lever that rang a bell in the terminal below.
    "Don't stop until someone takes over," the hut master instructed. After a few minutes, the cable shuddered, and the gondola moved off into the dark.
    "Why is this here?" Alessandro shouted upon noticing the tea flask tucked between the sheepskin and the sideboard of the gondola.
    "Against the cold. Drink it on the way back," they screamed over the wind, but he heard nothing after cold,' for he was already flying through a cloud that seemed as dense as cotton.
    He pushed against the bandsman's thick chamois shirt just as the soldier had done. Though he could see nothing, he knew he was still riding across the plateau on the summit, and that the gondola would soon carry him backward over the edge.
    He could feel the presence of the abyss the way a blind man feels the presence of the sea beyond a beach. Then he passed over, and he felt a weightless chill when he recognized the irresponsive silence of great height. Because the cable was steeply inclined, he had to lean forward to stay upright. Though his restraints might have saved him had he tumbled over the side, they didn't hold him in place: he accomplished that with his knees and by pressing his feet against the walls of the gondola.
    In less than a minute they left the envelope of cloud that covered the mountain and were in the free air. The stars were everywhere, even below, swaying in grand nausea. From the dark outline of peaks and valleys, Alessandro saw that he was a thousand meters above the ground, with not even a ledge nearby. No matter where he might reach out, he would find nothing, and all he could hear was the sound of wheels on the cable.
    Suddenly the body under him stirred. Still, he kept pushing as he had been told. "Marie!" the bandsman shouted in painful confusion. Alessandro hoped that the subject of his efforts would understand what was happening.
    "Marie!" the trumpeter shouted once again, with disturbing power, as Alessandro realized that he was on a horse without a saddle.
    "What are you doing?" the trumpeter asked in German of the local dialect, his eyes as wide as those of an enraged eel.
    Alessandro didn't understand the dialect, and guessed that the man had asked for the time. "It's night," he said, not knowing the hour exactly. He felt obliged to make conversation. "No moon, no nightingales, but all is well, and the badger is in his hole."
    The thin Italian voice, the heavy odor of sheepskin, the cradle-like rocking of the gondola, the hiss of the air, the darkness, and his own pain and distress were too much for the simple bandsman of Vols. He panicked. This was a nightmare, and all his life, whenever he had had a nightmare, he had thrashed. Now his main object was to rid himself of the little gargoyle that sat upon him with its wings folded like a bat, and continually butted his chest. These devilish creatures, they knew, and they were terribly cruel, because the heart was the place that hurt the most.
    "
Waldteufel!
" he screamed. "Forest devil!" He lifted his bulk from the waist up and latched on to Alessandro. Both hands, big fat things like rows of kielbasa, grabbed the boy's fragile neck and locked into rigor mortis, though the