There I rested, sobbing for breath, altogether bewildered what to do next. The more I squeezed myself into this perch, which accommodated only a part of my body, the more I had to consume the strength of my arms in unhappy holds. I heard Montague call out, “Don’t build your nest there. It’s no place to breed.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Back down a few feet. Work to your right.”
Here I discovered the curious nature of one’s own virtue. That is so inaccessible to us on normal occasions that we are doomed to become more intimate with our vices. Even as I took my first step in retreat, eyeing already the potentialities he had suggested on the right, I saw what might be a quicker way around the overhang if I tried a route to the left. It was riskier. To the right, I had his word at least, whereas to the left I could see one good move and then another, but there appeared to be a straddle ten feet above—a smooth rock face with two vertical cracks five feet apart—perhaps a grip or two, I could not tell. What appears to be a hold from below can prove only the shadow of a bulge; what promises an edge for one’s foot comes out to no more than a striation in the stone.
I took the option to the left. It was mine. It had not been given to me and so could become my virtue. Such was the state of my logic. Panting for breath as unashamedly as a woman in labor (which image I account for by my adolescent, film-sophisticated understanding of how a woman acts in labor), I could feel my religious education advancing by leaps. Virtue was grace. The impossible could be traversed by the intuitions of one’s heart. Scaling off to the left, I had to make moves I would not have attempted before. Desperate to prove my choice, I had to include one fancy scrabble from one welt of rock up to another, neither step of which could have held me for more than a second, but I did it all in one continuous move as if I were Montague, and in reward found myself able to stand and rest on the small ledge above the overhang.
Montague called down, “Three cheers, boy. You’re past the crux.”
It came on me. I had gotten through the worst. I continued on to the top in a state of elation that was potentially as dangerous as an all-out funk. “Perfect,” he said when I joined him. “Now we’ll try you on tougher stuff,” and began packing the gear for the drive to the next step.
3
ONE’S FEARS ON THE ROCK SOON GAIN PROPORTION. IF ONE DOES NOT TAKE the lead like Montague, but is belayed from above by a good climber, it soon becomes clear that you can afford on occasion to fall. Unaware my first time up of such relative security, I made every move as if a mistake might be my death. It took a second ascent that afternoon on a vertical column in The Precipices to make me aware that I was living in comparative safety. For when one move I made did not work and I slipped from a fractional foothold, I plunged but a couple of feet, suffering no more than a scrape to my knee. The rope was belaying me from above.
I made progress after that. Mr. Montague had accepted my father’s invitation to take his two-week summer vacation at Doane. So for two weeks I went out every day with him. (And often in the rain.) Once, he took along two of my cousins, but I took no pleasure in their fears. I felt—rare emotion—like a veteran.
Mr. Montague and I preferred to be alone. Each day he took me over a different kind of hazard. I was introduced to finger jams and pressure holds. I learned how to smear smooth rock with the heel of my hand. Lie-back holds and crack-backs were shown to me, foot jams and chimneys. He took me up squeeze chimneys and over slabs, gave me problems in mantling and hand traverses. Forgive me, but I mention these techniques to keep track of the different rock faces on which we spent our days. There were nights when the proper placement of pitons and bongs clanged in my head as I went to sleep, and I heard the hiss of the rope as Mr. Montague, on the lead, tugged it through the carabiner above me.
I had fallen in love with the illimitable skill of the rock climber. Clumsy, using my arms more than my legs, and my will as a substitute for wisdom, I scratched my way up many a face, growing filthy with the effluvia of the stone. For those two weeks of summer, I did not have a finger, an elbow, or a knee that was not raw, and my thighs and shins acquired a hundred bruises, but I was happy. I expect I was more happy than not for the first time in my life, and thereby, at the age of seventeen, grasped a truth some choose never to go near: Happiness is experienced most directly in the intervals between terror. As each climb he led me to was, in general, more difficult than the one before, so did I rarely have a day in which I was not washed in sweat. I spent time with fear as intimately as a body down with flu knows fever. I learned the implacable law of fear. It has to be conquered or it collects, then invades one’s dreams. There were days when I could not complete a climb and had to go down. In rock climbing, it is harder, however, to descend than to climb—one’s feet have to search for the holds, and they see less well than the fingers. So I slipped often, and dangled on the rope, and sweated, and knew myself doubly abject, and could not sleep that night for confronting my terror: I would have to return next day and do it properly. A compelling transaction. One is raising at such times all the ships that sank in childhood from loss of courage, yes, hoisting them up from the sea bottom of oneself. I felt as if all the childhood fears that weighed me down had begun their ascent to the surface—I was being delivered from the graveyard of expired hope. But what a chancy operation! Each time I failed to complete a climb, the fear I was hoping to cure was not consumed but turned corrupt.
Yet each time I succeeded, I received my dependable reward. For an hour, or for a night, I was happy. On the best day I had in those two weeks, which was next to the last day, Montague brought me back to Otter Cliffs and told me to take the lead. Notwithstanding all I had learned, going up first on the same ascent where I had begun proved several times more difficult. Taking the lead, I had to hammer in my pitons as I went, my arm in such a catalepsy of controlled panic that it would cramp after every few raps of the hammer. Now the prospect of a fall was serious again. On the lead, I tried to put a piton in every five feet, knowing each prospective fall could double the length since one might plummet from five feet above the last piton to five feet below. And that ten feet would double again should the lower piton pull out. Facing such a prospect, easy climbs became difficult.
Once I did fall. It was for ten feet, no more. My piton held, but I bounced on the end of the rope, then took a mean swing into the rock. Scraped, bruised, and feeling as shattered as a cat who has been plunged into a pail of ice water, I held my breath against the long temptation to whimper, took a full minute to call back the wide-flying streamers of my will, and, hard to believe that I was exacting this on myself, took on the climb again and searched for a way through the crux. It happened to be the same overhang as on the first day, but now I was dragging a rope behind me rather than being encouraged from above. Two weeks of newly acquired knowledge made the difference. I worked my way to the lip without another fall.
Those two weeks did more for me than any operation on my skull. I had new standing in the family. My cousins gave way to my opinions in passing squabbles, and my father took me out for a night of drinking in the modest bars of Bar Harbor. Toward the end of the evening, I was feeling as relaxed as a piece of spaghetti cooked in wine, and my male parent, giving, as usual, no more sign of drink than his massive emanations of good or bad will, said—he was obviously in a splendid spirit—“Hugh Montague has a good opinion of you. That’s the accolade, Harry. He doesn’t have three words to say for any ten people.”
“Well, I’m glad,” I said. I felt so corny I was ready to cry. Instead, I laid in a good swallow of bourbon. The flush it inspired told me for the first time how rich my father’s insides must feel.
“Hugh’s going to take you for a lobster dinner tomorrow,” he told me. “Hugh says you’re worth a good-bye party all to yourself.”
In the event, Hugh Montague had a great deal to say to me. By the first drink, I had begun to babble—the intoxication of having encountered this vocation which was a spor
t, a skill, and an open-air monastery for the soul, augmented by my successful lead that very afternoon, not to mention my felicitous connection with bourbon the night before, as well as the great (if hitherto unadmitted) release of knowing that Mr. Montague, fearsome godfather, would be gone tomorrow, had me nattering. I was ready to take vows never to betray the new discipline, but Mr. Montague cut me off.
“Harry, I’m going to tell you something that will hurt. I advance it, however, for your benefit. I have kept a high opinion of you over these two weeks. You are going to make a good man, and I respect that doubly in your case because you were dealt paltry cards in childhood. I gather your mother is tiny.”
“Yes.”
“And not wholly dependable, according to your father.”
“Not wholly.”
“Men work to develop their evil skills. Women—it is my belief—merely summon them.” When he saw my adolescent eyes were not within a hundred miles of the peak of this observation, he shrugged, and said, “When we know each other better, we might trade a few anecdotes about our respective mothers”—he came to a full stop as if startled by himself—“although, don’t count on it.”
“Yessir.”
“From now on, when we’re alone, you and I, I want you to call me by the name my associates employ. That name is Harlot. Not to be confused with Harlow, Jean Harlow, but Harlot.”
“Yessir.”
“One of the most persistent little questions over at Foggy Bottom is why Montague chose such a point of reference. Sooner or later, they all make the pilgrimage over to my good side and have the touching simplicity to ask directly. As if I were in haste to tell! Should we become exceptional friends, I’ll spill the beans. In twenty years.”
“Yes, Harlot.” I stopped. “It doesn’t sound right.”
“Never fear. You’ll get used to it.” He picked up the knuckles of a claw, twisted them apart without getting his fingertips caught on the spurs, and proceeded with his lobster fork to pluck forth the meat.
“Harry, I’ll present you with the worst first.” He fixed me with his eyes. There would be no sliding off. “I want you to give up rock climbing.”
He could as well have struck me in the face.
“Oh,” I said. “Golly.”
“It’s not that you are bad. You are better than your physical skills. You have innate moxie. Of ten beginners one might instruct, I say you would probably come in second or third in the lot.”
“Then why do I have to stop?” I paused. I dropped my voice. “Would I kill myself?”
“Probably not. Hurt yourself, certainly. But that’s not my reason. It’s more particular than that. Only the best of beginners should ever dream of going on. It’s more than just a sport, you see, for brave ones like yourself.” This was the first time anyone had ever called me brave.
“No,” I said, “why? Why do you want me to quit?”
“It’s an activity that insists on excellence. Harry, if you went on, it would take over your life. You could not rest. Whenever you failed on a climb, the memory would overpower every thought until you succeeded. Even among good people, that can be a terribly debilitating process. An addiction. One ends as a coward, a victim, or a mediocre monomaniac. It is like being an ex-alcoholic. One is able to contemplate nothing else.”
I was sufficiently agitated to say to him, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” My voice must have been rude-edged for I could feel his annoyance. His disciplines as a pedagogue may have saved me from a few thrusts of his temper.
“All right then,” he said, “we will go further. A man who acquires high competence in rock climbing is able to become the instrument of his own will. That’s what we try to arrive at. That’s what we’re encouraged to desire from the year one. A child is taught not to soil his pants. His bowels become the instrument of his will. And as we grow older, we often feel emotions that are as low and obstreperous as the embarrassing necessity, if caught in public, to take a drop.” He used the word as though that were the only acceptable synonym ever to employ. “Nonetheless, we say to our good sphincter, so much the creature of our will, ‘Tighten up, you fool.’
“Obviously rock climbing firms the upper regions of the will. But it’s quite a process. And just as dangerous as black magic. For every fear we are ready to confront is equally open, you see, to the Devil. Should we fail, the Devil is there to soothe our cowardice. ‘Stick with me,’ he says, ‘and your cowardice is forgiven.’ Whereas, rock climbing, when well done, pinches off the Devil. Of course, if you fail, his nibs returns twofold. If you are not good enough then, you spend half your days getting the Devil out. That is marking time. And so long as we stay in place, Satan is more than satisfied. He loves circular, obsessive activity. Entropy is his meat. When the world becomes a pendulum, he will inhabit the throne.”
“Maybe,” I said, “I would know what I could climb and what I couldn’t, and just stick with that.”
“Never. You are half your father. That half is not going to rest. I could see from the first day that by one measure you were equal to the best rock climbers. You understood it. You knew you were in one damned awesome church, indeed the only one where religion comes close enough to Our Lord to give a little real sustenance.”
“Yessir.”
“There’s a story I was told about some farfetched, terribly intense sect of Jewish people called Hasidim. They used to inhabit village ghettos in Russia and the Ukraine. It seems that one of their folk, a rabbi, was so devotional that he prayed to God forty times a day. Finally, after forty years, the rabbi grew impatient and said, ‘God, I have loved You for so long that I want You to reveal Yourself to me. Why won’t You reveal Yourself to me?’ Whereupon God did just that. He revealed Himself. How do you think the rabbi reacted?”
“I don’t know.”
Harlot began to laugh. I had never heard him give a full laugh before. It gave a clue to why he had chosen his name. Inside him were more people than one would have thought. His laugh was all over the place. “Well, Harry, the good fellow dived right under the bed and began to howl like a dog. ‘Oh, God,’ the rabbi said, ‘please do not reveal Yourself to me.’ That, Harry, is a useful story. Before all else, God is awesome. It’s the first thing to know. If Christ had not been sent to us, no one would ever have gotten out of the cave. Jehovah was too much for all of us. There would have been no modern civilization.”
“What about Egypt, or Greece and Rome? Didn’t they take us out of the cave?”
“Harry, those cultures marked time. They were perfect examples of the obsessional. Devil’s abodes, all three, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Don’t be impressed by how beautiful they were. The Devil, you must never forget, is the most beautiful creature God ever made. Spiritually, however, those cultures did not choose to emerge from Plato’s cave. It took Christ to come along and say, ‘Forgive the sons for the sins of the fathers.’ That’s the day, Harry, that scientific inquiry was born. Even if we had to wait a millennium and more for Kepler and Galileo. So, follow the logic: Once the father begins to believe that his sons will not suffer for his acts of sacrilege, he grows bold enough to experiment. He looks upon the universe as a curious place, rather than as an almighty machine guaranteed to return doom for his curiosity. That was the beginning of the technological sleigh ride which may destroy us yet. The Jews, of course, having rejected Christ, had to keep dealing with Jehovah for the next two millennia. So they never forgot. God is awesome. ‘Oh God, do not reveal Yourself to me. Not all at once!’”
He paused. He ordered another drink for each of us, Hennessey for himself, and Old Harper’s, I recollect, for me. “Let us have an Old Harper’s for Young Harry,” he actually said to the waitress, and went right back to his disquisition on the awesome: “I suspect that God is with us in some fashion on every rock climb. Not to save us—how I detest that tit-nibbling psychology—God saves!—God at the elbow of all misbegotten mediocrities. As if all that God had to do was preserve the middling and the indiffe
rent. No, God is not a St. Bernard dog to rescue us at every pass. God is near us when we are rock climbing because that is the only way we get a good glimpse of Him and He gets one of us. You experience God when you’re extended a long way out beyond yourself and are still trying to lift up from your fears. Get caught under a rock and of course you want to howl like a dog. Surmount that terror and you rise to a higher fear. That may be our simple purpose on earth. To rise to higher and higher levels of fear. If we succeed, we can, perhaps, share some of God’s fear.”
“His fear?”
“Absolutely. His fear of the great power He has given the Devil. There is no free will for man unless the Devil’s powers were made equal on this embattled planet to the Lord’s. That is why,” he said, “I don’t want you to continue rock climbing. The brute fact is that you don’t have the exquisite skills that are necessary. So you will keep finding a little courage and losing it. You could end up like one of those monumentally boring golfers who work for years to improve their swing and never stop talking about it. Orotund blobs of narcissism.”
“Okay,” I said. Now I was angry. Awfully hurt but clearly angry.
“All this is not in disrespect for your feelings, but in true respect. I believe there is a place for you. It will make demands upon your courage, your intelligence, your will, and your wit. You will be tempted by the Devil at every turn. But you can, in my modest opinion, serve God. In a far better way, I propose, than as a rock climber.”
Formidable were his gifts of transition. I had been shifted from the pits of an unexpected wound to a pitch of interest. “Are you saying what I suppose you are saying?”
“Of course. Your father asked me to spend my vacation looking you over as a prospect. Nothing less. I had other plans for these two weeks. But he said, ‘More than anything, I want the boy to come aboard with us. Only, however, if you think he’s right. It’s too important a matter to be judged by my desires and affection.’”
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