Zürs

Zürs enters the account as a place of refuge from higher mountain terrain—and as the destination of a couple whose reported fate gives that choice a grave afterlife. The narrator does not describe the resort itself; its significance rests on the couple’s departure and the later news associated with it.

The Couple’s Departure

The couple had come from Vienna to ski but did not want to go into the high mountains. They were leaving for Zürs instead. Their decision is presented alongside a tense conversation after a lecture by a former German naval officer: the man condemned the lecturer and predicted that people like him would ruin Germany again, while the woman urged him to be quiet, warning that they were in a small place and could not know who might hear.

Reported Fate

The narrator says that he later heard the couple were killed in an avalanche. The account connects their departure for Zürs with that report but offers no further details about the avalanche or confirms precisely where it occurred. The wording preserves the limits of the narrator’s knowledge: their deaths reach the reader as news heard after they leave, rather than as an event witnessed directly.

Narrative Significance

Zürs appears briefly, but the couple’s plan to avoid the high mountains is set against the danger of the snowy season described around it. Their intended change of destination does not secure safety in the narrator’s retrospective account. The place is therefore marked less by description than by the contrast between a practical attempt to avoid risk and the later report of fatal misfortune.