The Moth and the Mountain

by Ed Caesar

“Santa Claus been round,” he writes. “Just imagine, bull’s eyes in the desert.”

  * * *

  A party of three set out from Rongbuk in the early hours of Saturday, May 12, 1934: Wilson, Rinzing, and Tewang. By the day of departure, Tsering had become ill himself, so he stayed behind to guard the party’s belongings. The group made strong progress up the Rongbuk Glacier. Wilson now felt more at home in this strange world of scree, snow, and ice. He picked his way upward with more care. The three men stopped in the same site Wilson had used on his last attempt, somewhere just short of the junction between the Rongbuk and East Rongbuk Glaciers. That night, Wilson was buoyant:

  Here we are again, girlie, at Camp I or at least near to it.… Tewang was just about played out so we turned in here. He is a marvel, and if you want to show your appreciation, you can give him a complimentary dinner when we arrive. He has been down with some sort of bowel trouble for over three weeks, and has carried his whack with the rest for 7 hours. Getting colder as the sun is just down. Writing in mitts in the boys tent, as my pencil is like ice. The boys are getting ready evening meal, only hot tea, and we brought plenty of ready made chupatties with us, save fuel.… Told [Rinzing] this p.m. they are on extra backsheesh for coming to camp 3, as they volunteered without asking for it. Height 19500ft. Instrument shows 300ft more than last time, maybe, due to weather. Sun been terrific today, am using German anti-frost and violet ray cream. Getting much colder so going over tent and getting half into bed, keep the heat in. Lovely and warm.

  Wilson slept fitfully. The tea sat like soup in his belly. He thought about the crampons he’d found and then discarded near Camp II last time. They were essential to his success this time around, he believed. Wilson determined to find them again and to wear them when the going got tough between Camp II and Camp III. In fact, the early days of this second attempt were partly an exercise in retrieving useful items discarded during the previous sortie. Rinzing spent much of Sunday afternoon in the environs of Camp II searching for a rucksack Wilson had discarded; it contained both food and an extra jersey Wilson had promised to give to him. Rinzing eventually joined Wilson and Tewang in their tents when the night turned pitch-black. Rinzing had good news: he had found the rucksack. Meanwhile, Wilson wrote a quick note to Enid in his diary: “Gorgeous day, and wondering what you are doing.”

  By sunset on Monday, two days after beginning their climb, the three men had reached Camp III. They were making rapid progress, which suggests Wilson had also rediscovered the lost crampons—although he never notes this important detail in his diary. Rinzing hastily erected a tent, and Tewang, still weak, collapsed into it. Wilson described what happened next:

  Had intended pushing on a further mile to the expedition food, but couldn’t make it. R didn’t want to go alone for some fool reason for box of food, so went with him. He rushed the job and got ahead in the failing light, being lost completely to me and in the dark. I kept yelling (still have my Sgt Major parade voice) and he replied from the distance, but hadn’t the damned sense to show the torch. I returned to tent in pitch dark and had just got into kip when he rolled up.

  Rinzing brought a box of food back with him from Ruttledge’s abandoned stores. He and Wilson cracked it open.

  Well talk about a Santa Claus party outside my tent. Plum jam, honey, butter (hadn’t seen any for weeks), cheese, assorted biscuits, Bournville chocolate, anchovy paste, Nestle’s milk, and other treasures from heaven. Too late and too cold to do any cooking, so had biscuits and choc, and went to bed on that.

  Wilson was indeed born under a lucky star. He had not brought the right gear: he found some crampons. He had not packed nearly enough food: he stumbled upon Aladdin’s cave.

  At daybreak, he felt within touching distance of the summit. During the scramble up the East Rongbuk Glacier, the top of Everest had been obscured from view by the North Peak. But from Camp III, the rock-triangle summit was clearly visible, along with the brutal, magnificent northeast shoulder of the mountain. When Ruttledge made Camp III, he inverted Prospero’s famous speech from The Tempest and wrote, “Mount Everest is tangible, no longer the fabric of dreams and visions.” Wilson, surely, must by now have felt a similar bite of anticipation.

  Members of the 1924 expedition climb the North Col.

  On the first morning in Camp III, Rinzing went back for another box from the expedition dump, and more marvels appeared. When Wilson saw that some of the food in the expedition stores had been bought at Fortnum & Mason, the store he and Enid used to sneak away to together, he was thrilled by the connection, writing: “What a kick you’d get if I could but wireless the news.”

  Wilson stuffed himself. At the end of a gourmand Tuesday at nearly twenty-two thousand feet above sea level, he wrote:

  Eaten everything about the place today… soup, ovaltine, and heaven knows what. Maple sugar, cake, and vegetable ration. You couldn’t guess what I’m wallowing in as I write? A 1lb box of King George chocs! Shall be off tomorrow if weather good. Alone for the final crack. Shall have my concave mirror tied to my load, so they can see progress all day. Have dispensed with large rucksack, using small cotton one for food and spare jerseys. The two straps from large [rucksack] I am using as slings for tent and flea bag.

  Wilson didn’t strike out for Camp IV the next day. The night before his proposed climb up the North Col, his head began to ache. The weather was also rotten. By Thursday, May 17, with his head still causing him trouble, Wilson consulted Tewang. His Bhutia friend told him that everyone suffered from headaches to a greater or lesser degree at altitude. The inference Wilson drew from Tewang was obvious: it was time to go. But Wilson couldn’t make himself strike out on his own. For the first time since conceiving of his adventure, Wilson admitted to feeling fear. The upper slopes of the mountain now looked very real, and daunting. No longer the fabric of dreams and visions.

  Wilson’s end seemed close, too. His death-or-glory mission always seemed to have more of the former about it than the latter. Wilson was fascinated by the thinness of the boundary between life and the hereafter. In Flanders, he had stayed at his post, firing his weapon, as men died all around him. These were men he knew; men he liked and disliked; men with whom he had minutes before shared jokes and cigarettes. If a bullet had gone an inch one way, or an inch the other, chances are he would have joined them. If he had been assigned to a different company, chances are he would have joined them. If he had sailed to France six weeks earlier, in time for the carnage of Passchendaele, chances are he would have joined them. But those mortal threats had missed him, and life had gone on, sometimes unbearably.

  Death both terrified Wilson and enticed him. Sigmund Freud described the death drive, which he sometimes referred to as Thanatos, the Greek god of death. Freud argued that an aggressive, self-destructive urge was one of the competing forces within the human psyche. Was Wilson consciously or unconsciously committing suicide on Everest? It seems like a simplistic interpretation, at best. Certainly, Wilson felt some of what the French term l’appel du vide, “the call of the void.” But Wilson’s attempt on Everest also emerged from a desire to be deathless, to have his name written forever in the history books. When he had first seen Everest up close, he had joyously anticipated the moment when “the world will be on fire.” In other words, he wanted to experience the reaction to his ascent of the mountain. Wilson also longed to get back to his “golden friendships,” and he yearned to see his mother again.

  Earlier on his adventure, in India, Wilson had witnessed a cremation ceremony. The event both impressed and chilled him. Wilson described the body being burned “to the tune of a very nerve wracking cant,” before the remains were piled into an urn, which was then placed in a boneyard. The swiftness of it had unsettled Wilson.

  “What a life,” he wrote to Enid. “Or rather, what a death.”

  Perhaps it was strange that it had taken Wilson so long to show fear. The parachute jump, the flight to India, the trek to the mountain—he had much to be frigh
tened of. But on that Thursday, facing the prospect of a steep, solitary climb on the highest mountain on earth, he trembled. He couldn’t sleep, he wrote, because of his “aching nerves.”

  On the same day, Wilson composed a letter—his last—which he left in the possession of Tewang. It was addressed to the deputy commissioner in Darjeeling and dated May 17. The sender’s address was marked simply as “Camp III”:

  This serves to inform you that my 3 coolies were bribed to see me to Rongbuk for the purpose of a sole climb on Mt. E. from the announcement of which you no doubt took a laugh with the rest.

  They have served me faithfully thro many tight corners and I am asking you as a sportsman to use your endeavours to see that they go free from any punishment which certain civil authorities may consider it their “duty” to inflict.

  Some of us go looking for it and some wait for it to call us up, but taking a look at Mt. E. from where I write, it is certainly a job worth doing.

  Keep smiling, and look after these lads.

  Cheerio.

  M. Wilson

  Some of us go looking for it.

  * * *

  A blizzard overtook the party that Friday. Wilson and the two Bhutias had no choice but to stay in their tents. A stay of execution. On Saturday, May 19, another windy, snowy whiteout, stuck under canvas, Wilson’s thoughts once more turned to Enid:

  Another couple of days and it will be 12 months since I said cheerio to you all. How time flies. Suppose it only feels like yesterday since you and Len were married… Feeling much better today after the long layup out of the sun. Am as dirty as they make ’em… Shall be glad when the show is over and I can become a bit more civilised again.

  Eventually, on Monday, May 21, Wilson set out from his tent, to make what he believed would be his final attempt to reach the summit of Everest. In his pocket was a one-inch square of map showing the top of Everest. Wilson had cut the rest of the map away and left it behind.

  Rinzing, who was by now attached to this strange English Sahib by more than just a contract, who was now a witness to his wideness of soul, could not let him go alone. Rinzing climbed with Wilson for most of the day. He showed the amateur how to cut steps in the ice, and the most prudent route to take, out of the path of the avalanches that frequently cascaded down the ice wall. Even so, the two men made slow progress.

  There was no obvious route up the North Col. Its shape, and consequently its dangers, were always shifting. Each different Everest expedition had taken a slightly different route to Camp IV. Wilson was hoping that the Ruttledge expedition had left a rope ladder or two, but if they were there, he did not find them. He and Rinzing made it about halfway up the Col together before the Bhutia turned around, as planned, and returned to Camp III. Wilson scrambled a little farther up the steep face before pitching his tent for the night as the sun disappeared.

  The next day, Wilson pushed on again, with little success. He didn’t have the technique or the equipment to climb a wall of ice, snow, and rock. During the afternoon of his second day climbing from Camp III, he found a refuge somewhere beneath the “ice chimney” described by previous expeditions—a channel that led to the top of the North Col, and to flatter ground. It had been an “ ’ell of a day,” he wrote in his diary, and he had made almost no progress. What’s more, his efforts had exhausted him entirely. He spent much of Wednesday, May 23, in his sleeping bag, perched in a tent on a narrow ledge halfway up a rock face. On Thursday, despite sunny, windless conditions, he again could not summon the energy to make another assault on the Col. It was as if, at this moment, he realized that willpower alone could not deliver him the victory he craved.

  Most perfect day in the show and I spent it all in bed. Had a horrible job yesterday and whoever selected that route ought to be poleaxed. Am parked at an angle of 35 degrees, but have shaped the snow to my carcass. Had 5 dry biscuits yesterday and nothing since, as there is nothing to have. Camp IV is somewhere within a ½ mile radius of here so should be on the eats again by midday tomorrow. Funny, but all these stick ups I get, feel do have a “reason.” Can’t get fire today, used my matches for candle stand yesterday and they became saturated… Saw Rinzi on the ice today, but don’t know whether he saw me.

  The next day, having run out of food, and realizing that he lacked the skill to climb alone, Wilson decided to attempt a return to Camp III. He wanted to persuade one of the Bhutias to come with him a little higher up the mountain.

  Wilson’s descent of more than a thousand feet of steep ice and rock wall on that Friday was a miracle of deliverance. He fell, twice, and tumbled down long stretches of the North Col. Both times, he managed to stop himself before suffering serious damage, or falling into a crevasse. His only injury was bruised ribs. Eventually, he staggered toward the camp. Rinzing ran to Wilson and held him in his arms.

  “Wasn’t I glad to see him,” Wilson wrote that night, before falling asleep for a long time.

  Tewang and Rinzing were desperate to return to Rongbuk. They could see that Wilson was physically beaten. But when Wilson emerged from his sleep, he endeavored to persuade the men to climb with him, at least as far as Camp V. They refused, quite properly. Even if, at that moment, they had all decided to return to Rongbuk, they remained in mortal danger. The party had spent many days exposed to the high winds and subzero temperatures of the highest mountain on earth. Tewang was in particularly bad shape. Wilson looked awful. To press on would be to sign one’s own death warrant. But this was exactly what Wilson proposed, and he wanted one or both of Rinzing and Tewang to accompany him.

  On Monday, May 28, Wilson wrote in his diary that both men had agreed to accompany him to Camp V. But they had done no such thing, as became clear to him later in the day. They had agreed that they would wait for him for a period of days in Camp III before returning to Rongbuk via the glaciers.

  * * *

  Wilson retreated under canvas. That night, now feeling utterly alone, he pulled out his flag of friendship and held it close to him. He also recorded in his diary a hallucination, or a spiritual encounter, or a potent yearning.

  “Strange,” he wrote. “But I feel that there is someone with me in tent all the time.”

  The next day, Wilson set off alone for Camp IV, having said his farewells to Tewang and Rinzing. The wind was so hard and cold it nearly cut him in two. He made it halfway up the Col, turned back, and pitched his lightweight tent near its base. He had enough food with him for a few days but ate barely any of it. His flag of friendship was stuffed into his pocket. The gold cross that he wore—rescued from the corpse of a man he never knew and returned to a young woman he never knew, from the battlefields of a war whose origins remained a mystery to him—bore the inscription AMOR VINCIT OMNIA.

  That night, the blizzard raged. Wilson spent the entire next day in his tent. His body was as weak as a kitten’s, but his spirit remained strong. Whatever fear he had was gone. On Thursday, May 31, Wilson made his final legible diary entry.

  It read, in its entirety, “Off again, gorgeous day.”

  EPILOGUE

  Days passed, and the Sahib did not return. Tewang and Rinzing later claimed that they remained at Camp III, as they had promised, for at least two weeks. It’s hard to know exactly how long they stayed. Perhaps they stayed a week; perhaps it was only a few days. Certainly, there was no sign of the twinkling concave mirror on the mountain. The monsoon, and a decision, approached.

  In fact, Wilson’s emaciated, stone-cold body lay only a few hundred feet from their tent, at the foot of an icefall. The Bhutias apparently did not find it. They had been under canvas, preserving energy, and staying out of the wind, listening for the sound of Wilson’s voice. Eventually, Tewang and Rinzing assumed the worst and struck camp.

  The two Bhutias descended the glacier in stages to Rongbuk, where they found Tsering. They told him everything. Gloom gave way to pragmatism. The men gathered Wilson’s meager possessions, including a sheaf of letters from Enid, some Kodak film, and some clot
hes, then loaded up the pony and began the long journey home.

  Arriving back in Darjeeling after the weeks-long trek, the men were arrested. At first, they told a straightforward lie: The Sahib caught a train to Calcutta, and who knows where he is now? Eventually, under questioning, the truth tumbled out: the whole sorry, beautiful, melancholy, crazy tale.

  The Bhutias handed over the letter Wilson wrote for them. Keep smiling, and look after these lads. The British officials in Darjeeling read it, then listened to the Bhutias’ story—with wide eyes, you imagine. The officers then wondered what to do with the information. There seemed no doubt that Wilson had died on the mountain. But any publication of that fact would draw attention to his illegal presence in Tibet. A diplomatic ruckus seemed certain to ensue.

  * * *

  Stories as good as Wilson’s don’t stay secret for long. A journalist from Reuters caught a whiff and wrote about the Yorkshireman’s escapade. Every paper in London followed the agency report. The stories inevitably focused on Wilson’s scant provisions—“3 Loaves and 2 Tins of Porridge!” shouted the Daily Mail’s subheading—and how Everest experts proclaimed his attempt a “virtual suicide.” The Telegraph printed a map of Wilson’s route. The Express pronounced Wilson’s climb a “magnificent effort.” The Star said he left his porters with a “cheery wave of the hand.” The Times ran a long, sober, but strangely poetic report. It was published alongside a dispatch about an insurrection in the German Nazi brownshirt movement. The Times journalist noted that Wilson “had been known to say that the man who would get up Everest was an Indian yogi, who had no possessions and was inured to hard and simple living. In this faith he appears to have dared and died.”