60.

“WE WILL BE IN SPAIN FOR DINNER,” SAID ROLAND, WHO HAD clustered his flock of trekkers at the start of the trail, just beyond the hotel. He issued pairs of metal walking sticks, then gave a brief talk about the old smugglers’ trails, long used to transport contraband. He did not mention refugees or wayward American airmen.

Their group was small—an Australian in a tam who described himself as a bon vivant, a sturdy couple from Denmark, the Canadian couple, and a French woman with her recently returned big American.

The climb was not arduous, although the footing was uncertain. Marshall discovered that he needed both his walking sticks for balance on tricky patches of sand and gravel. They were walking on a narrow path through a forest, the light coming through thick growth. Marie was walking point and Roland brought up the rear. Now and then Marshall heard them on their talkie-walkies. He walked close behind Annette, to catch her if she slipped. But she moved with graceful confidence.

The path ran along a ledge above a stream. Below, two cows were nibbling at tree branches. On the path ahead were more cows, one with long horns.

“They are peaceful cows,” called Marie to the group.

“Watch your step,” Marshall said to Annette.

“This is beautiful,” she said.

“Are you out of breath yet?”

“No. I breathe well. And you?”

“I’m O.K. This is exhilarating.”

He could hear the flat metal sounds of cowbells, several of them clanking randomly.

“Listen to the cowbells,” he said. “Strange music.” Familiar music.

The ground leveled for a time, and the trail narrowed as it passed among boulders spotted with lichen. He remembered the grand rock at the zoo in Saint-Mandé.

Robert Lebeau was Marshall’s better self. Annette was his better half.

He put one foot in front of the other. The awkward atonal music of the cowbells grew fainter. He recalled cowbells in the Kentucky mountains, cattle roaming, foraging, their bells like cracked voices singing folk ballads.

Time was a bellows, opening and closing. He remembered himself as the young boy who first saw a biplane flying above the mountains and wanted desperately to sprout wings. He had watched buzzards and hawks soaring through the valleys and rising over the tops of small green mountains, borne beyond wraiths of fog.

Now the Canadian couple was chattering about Biarritz and how clean it was, how they hoped they would have a better bed at the hotel in Spain than they had last night. The Australian man was telling Annette about hiking to the top of Pic du Canigou in the Catalan region. There, at the summit, he came upon two men cooking paella.

“Right on the top!” he cried. “They brought the whole kit and there they were—cooking paella! Unbelievable. Barely standing room on a pile of rocks, and they’re cooking paella.”

“Mais oui, bien sûr!” Annette said. “Paella is much, much better in the open air.”

“Why not?” said Marshall.

After a while, they emerged from thinning trees, and the view opened out. The sun was brilliant, but it gave little warmth here, in the heights. Marshall spotted a glint of snow on a distant peak. Ahead, he could see vague misty clouds swirling in front of dark, enveloping mountain faces. The group spread out on the trail, with their young guides positioned fore and aft. The climb was becoming steeper. At a narrow curve, Roland waited until all the hikers were in sight, and he signaled to Marie. He was leading their formation now, and Marie was Tail-End Charlie.

Roland advanced around the curve. Marshall was following Annette, her blue beret rising and falling in front of him as they climbed into the haze ahead.

They were gaining altitude.