by Tony Daniel
“Yeah, well, now I’mun retired.”
Suddenly, the entire conversation was enormously funny to Jeremiah. He couldn’t control himself; he was shaking with mirth. Ánalia held him tighter and caressed him. She probably thinks I’m in pain. Maybe she thinks someone has called to tell me—that my parents died or something.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “It’s nothing. It’s okay.”
“Okay?” she whispered.
“Well, more or less.”
“Hey, tell her howdy for me, whoever she is, won’t you, Jeremiah?” said Charlie.
“Uh huh.”
“And you think about this. This is my dream, Jeremiah. I need this, more than I’ve ever needed anything before. It’s a matter of life and death for me.”
“I see,” said Jeremiah.
“I mean it.”
“I know.” And hedid . He could tell Charlie Worth was not shitting him.
“Call me in a week,” said Charlie. Then he hung up. Jeremiah stayed on the phone as the connections broke—U.S. to satellite to Buenos Aires to Mendoza—one by one. Click. Click. Click. Click.
He slowly hung up the phone. He found that he had lost his breath for a second and was breathing in quick gasps. The room smelled very much like sex.
“That was Charlie,” he said. “My best friend and partner since I was twenty years old and climbed my first mountain.” And then he told her the rest. After he finished, Ánalia was silent for a long time.
She pulled back a little bit. There was the tiniest crack between them, Jeremiah thought. Just big enough to jam in a finger for a good hold in rock climbing. But flesh was not rock.
“Do you think you are going to do this?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Then let me ask you another question. Do you think there is a place for me in this thing?”
The question he dreaded. The question he had been asked so many times, and had never known how to answer.
“I don’t know that, either.”
“When are you going to know?”
“I have to decide what to do soon. There are many arrangements to be made.”
“You have to climb Aconcagua very soon, then.”
“Yes.”
“It can’t wait for summer?”
“This summer, I will be in Nepal making preparations. It’ll be winter there, of course.If I go.”
“Who will go with you to Aconcagua?”
He looked at her long, hard, objectively. She was too soft. Not because she was a woman. Nothing of the sort. Because she wasn’t him.
“Someandinista I know. Gil Parra, probably. But I was thinking of soloing the summit.”
“I couldn’t make it?”
“No.”
“You will go this week?”
“It would be best. Gil could go, as support.”
“That would probably be for the best,” she said. The crack was widening. In space, in time.
“Then there is something I would like to tell you,” Ánalia said.
“What? What is it?”
“You have another cavity developing. I saw it when I filled the other. I knew you didn’t have any money, and silver is expensive.”
“Ah.”
“I will cancel my appointments this afternoon and fill it for you.”
He looked at Ánalia closely then. She was crying softly, dabbing her eyes with the cover from his bed.
I cannot say why I decided to sail to Antarctica alone. I do know where and when I came up with the notion of climbing the Vinson Massif. I was working my way through the infamous Rock Band of Mount Everest. This was my second trip to the mountain, and I had every hope of being on the summit team. Everest is not only the highest point on Planet Earth, it is—perhaps beside the point—the highest peak in Asia. I had already climbed McKinley—Denali it is also called—in Alaska, so I had North America’s highest point under my belt. I thought that, after I finished the big one—Everest—I could go and do the rest in short order. This was not to be.As we neared the summit of Everest, the team that was to establish the last camp before the top made a mistake. Nobody knows what the mistake was. Or maybe it was not a mistake. Maybe it was a pure accident. Accidents and mistakes have the same outcome in the Himalayas. One of the members of that team was a friend. A woman I had loved, and asked to marry me. In all, three people fell to their deaths, roped together physically, by fate, by the mistake of one team member. By the accidental callousness of the universe. Like ants on the sticky tongue of the anteater.
I found her body the next day, but it was too dangerous to carry her out. I knew she wouldn’t have wanted me to risk it. After that, I went sailing for a long time. Some months later, I found myself in New Zealand.
—Still Life at the Bottom of the World
For the first time that night, Jeremiah took from his pack the little mountain scene made from butterfly wings that Ánalia had given him. In the light of the waxing moon, the colors were gone, but the texture was accented, so that the mountains looked furry, as if they were covered with great hordes of moths.
He and Parra set up the tent in the flattest place they could find and partially buried it in snow, for the insulation. Jeremiah was not entirely happy about the location, though it did not look prone to avalanches. There was a gully off to the side a few hundred yards that the falling snow would most likely channel down if it did come in the night. Winter mountaineering was in every way a careful man’s game.
After they’d burrowed into their sleeping bags, Jeremiah discussed the weather with Parra.
“I think there is a storm coming,” Parra told him. “But I’m not sure when. We may have several days . . . I do not have so much experience in the winter here.”
“Tomorrow we will climb to the Berlin hut.”
“That is something I wanted to talk with you about, amigo,” said Parra. “I’m beginning to think your solo idea is the best one.”
They’d discussed it before. Jeremiah had done the other five highest continental peaks alone. Of course Kilimanjaro and Elbrus were merely long walks. And climbing Australia’s Kosciusko was comparable to hiking up Cheaha, back in Alabama. Denali had been a bitch, though. He’d done that one in winter, also. But Jeremiah had never experienced hardship like he had on Vinson. After the sheer unmanning cold, the worst part was knowing that, even though there was a small contingent of well-wishers below in base camp, if he hurt himself, the nearest hospital was hundreds and hundreds of miles away—and the airplane came on schedule, period. Even if you were dying. That was the way it had to be in the Antarctic.
But Parra had been uncertain about whether he wanted to make the winter ascent, and it was mostly Parra’s equipment, after all. Jeremiah had decided to let the mountain take care of the decision. Apparently, it had done so, just as Jeremiah had expected.
“Do you want to stay here, or go down to Plaza de Mulas?” Jeremiah asked. “And are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure,” Parra said. “I am feeling bad luck for myself on this one. But it will be okay for me to stay here and keep some hot tea on for you.”
Parra was making a brave gesture, and Jeremiah respected it. He could not have found a better person to come into the Andes with. Parra would be a perfect team member on Everest.
“Thank you, amigo,” Jeremiah said. “When I come back down, I may have something to discuss with you.”
“What?”
“A climb.”
“Well, when you come back down, we will discuss it.”
Jeremiah had difficulty sleeping that night. It was very cold, and he was going over his route again and again. He’d memorized a photograph of the winter west face of Aconcagua, but here on the mountain, there was no way to stand back and gain perspective on where he was. He’d need to be thoughtful as well as strong if he were to make it. They were at 16,200 feet. Nearly a half-mile above the tallest of the Rockies, Jeremiah reflected. Tomorrow would be real mountain climbing.
Parra woke Jeremiah up before dawn with a cup of tea and some oatmeal. They ate in silence. Jeremiah got out his pack and, by the light of his headlamp, began to examine and discard anything he wouldn’t need. A day pack to carry things in. The tent would stay. He’d have to carve out a snow cave, for the climb would require one or possibly two overnight bivouacs. But not having to carry the tent’s weight was an acceptable trade-off. He would not need rope. Rope was what you used when you went with a partner. It waswhy you went with a partner. Safety. No rope. An ice ax, and a shorter tool. Stove, fuel, and food. Camera. Sunglasses. He had on long underwear, synthetic fleece pants and jacket, a toboggan on his head. Heavy woolen socks. Wind pants over the fleece pants. A down parka. A parka shell. Gaiters over his boots. Crampons. Silk undergloves. Wool gloves. Nylon overmitts to keep away the frostbiting wind.
I am an astronaut, Jeremiah thought. All I need is a jet backpack. That would make the whole thing simpler, wouldn’t it? He slung his day pack into position. It was very much lighter. Maybe forty pounds. He could barely feel it.
“Go with God,” said Parra. Jeremiah shook Parra’s hand, then began climbing the mountain. The going was easy at first. The snow surface was hard-frozen overnight, and his crampons gripped it with precision. He felt fine, very strong. As the sun came up, Jeremiah began to sing. It was an old Eagles tune from his college days, “Peaceful, Easy Feeling.” Charlie had liked that one, too. They’d nearly worn it out on the Walkman they’d carried on their bumming trip in the Chamonix Valley, when they’d done three peaks a day for a week. As the day went on, he continued to make good time. Yet the summit looked no nearer. Jeremiah began to fall into a sort of trance, but an alert trance. He carefully cramponed up the moderate slope, using classic single-ax technique expertly and unconsciously. His short ax was lashed to his day pack.
As the sun moved higher overhead, the snow’s surface began to weaken. Jeremiah found himself slogging through deep drifts, sometimes up to his shoulders. The climbing was grueling, and he only made a few hundred feet an hour. The altitude also began to take its toll. No matter how good the condition he was in, there were built-in limits to what the human body could do, without proper oxygen. He used his tiredness to gauge how high he was. Quite tired at 17,000. Screaming for air was 18,000 to 18,500. Nearing exhaustion at 19,000. At 19,700 he’d had all he could take in one day. But he’d arrived at Camp Berlin. In the summer, there was an iron hut here, roofless, more of a landmark than any kind of shelter. He could barely see the tip of its frame poking through the snow. It was located in an excellent spot for avoiding avalanches, however, and Jeremiah wearily began to dig a snow cave into the snowbank that had drifted near to the hut. After an hour of work, he struck the hut’s side and, amazingly, half of its front door. He dug back into the hut a ways more, then paused, his lungs and arms aching. He was very satisfied with his work, and spread his thermal pad and sleeping bag out into the cave. Then, wrapped in his bag, he lit the stove and boiled water for tea and dinner soup. Jeremiah felt very safe and comfortable, despite the cold and the altitude.
Outside, he could see, just over the lip of his cave, that the snow was blood red with the dying embers of the sun.Practice what you preach, Jeremiah, he heard a voice say. What the hell? He unzipped his bag and crawled to the entrance. Nobody there, but the mountainside was on fire with the sun. He was dazed by the beauty and sat for a long time, lost, mesmerized by the play of sun on snow. There were shades to the red, as the contours of the mountain caught the light in different ways. Not what you’d expect. In places, some deep crevasses and gullies were alight, as if a beacon burned within them. On the flat snow, the crystalline ice sparkled, and the spendrift cascade that was always flowing down the mountain blushed nearly pink, looking like scars on the mountain’s face. But traveling scars.
And there was someone here, nearby. He could feel her presence.Her. That voice. Was it Mandy’s? It had been so long now. With a deep sadness, he found that he could not remember what she’d sounded like.Be careful tomorrow, the voice said. He spun around. Did he catch a glimpse of something, someone? A flash of parka as she turned to leave? Or was it just the shimmering snow? It’s the altitude, is what it is, he told himself. He slid back into his shelter and pulled his sleeping bag tight around him. He slept fitfully, hearing the voice again and again in his dreams. Sometimes it was Mandy’s. But awake, he could not be sure.
When he awoke for the last time, the sky was lightening. Jeremiah had the feeling in his bones that it was going to be a dangerous morning.
Nevertheless, the climbing was not extremely difficult at first. Jeremiah came to steeper sections that had shed their snow and were covered with ice, or bare. The ice was good, for he was a strong ice climber and had a fine technique. He front-pointed up several steep slopes, driving in his ice axes, steadying himself, and then kicking in the tips of his crampons. It looked very dangerous, as if he were stuck to the mountain by the thinnest of margins, and indeed, the blades of the axes and the points of his crampons were less than an inch into the ice. But Jeremiah had climbed giant frozen waterfalls using this procedure, and was completely at home with it.
As he neared the summit pyramid, he began to face some exposure, with drops of a half-mile and more to one side or the other. Jeremiah had always been afraid of heights, and that was part of the reason he’d been so attracted to climbing. He found this fear exhilarating, for—after he’d faced it the first time—he knew that it was a fear he could overcome and use.
After Jeremiah was up the ice slope, the going got rougher. The snow and ice slopes, which had been horribly tiring, but straightforward, gave way to seracs—ice and snow blocks as big as Citroëns and shaped not unlike them—and Jeremiah had to pick his way through them carefully. All the time, he was aware that the snow underfoot could shift slightly and one of these blocks could tumble over onto him. He would die. It had happened in the great icefall near the base of Everest, though never on a team he’d been on.His friends seemed to die more spectacularly.
Finally, he was through the worst of this band of seracs and came out upon a slightly flattened area. Another man-made structure, half-destroyed, barely protruded from the snow. It was a shattered A-frame that had once been a hut. Camp Independencia, Parra had called it. Jeremiah decided that this was as good a place as any to take a break. He got out his stove once more and began to brew tea water. He’d had an extraordinary morning so far, climbing a little over 1,200 feet in three hours. “Who took all the fucking air?” he said. It was an old joke, a ritual really, that he performed whenever he was over 20,000 feet. He made his tea and sat quietly. His voice had disturbed the silence of the morning and, with it, some of his repose. He wanted to get that back. Only the gentle hiss of the stove disturbed the quiet. Then came another hiss from far below, the wrenching squeak of ice on ice. A thunderous roar, growing in intensity, as the sound of a car on a gravel road will as it gets closer and closer. What in God’s name? Jeremiah walked to the edge of his level resting place and looked down.
Aconcagua was on the move.Ice torrents poured down either side of the mountain, while down its middle a giant section of snow had broken away and was tumbling down, taking everything in its path with it, growing, growing. It completely obliterated his path back down, turning it into an unstable mush of snow, ice, and rock. He’d never seen an avalanche so huge! He watched and watched as it rolled on and seemed never to end. He thought of Parra down below, waiting. Even such an avalanche as this would probably not make it to the flattened-out area where they’d pitched Camp 1. But who could say? This was beyond measurement, beyond belief. What could have caused it?
And how the hell was he going to get back down?
After what seemed hours, the icefall subsided. If he had not been climbing as well as he had this morning, if he’d not heeded the strange voice from yesterday, he’d have been a part of that, a corpse, rapidly freezing, lost from sight until the spring thaws. Of course, there was still that possibility.
He looked at the summit. Lenticular clouds were forming, space-saucer prophets of storm. Great. More snow’s coming. No way down except maybe over the summit and down the other side. To what? There were no shepherds in the high valleys at this time of year. He’d perish with no food and no way to melt snow for water. His only hope was that Parra had survived and was waiting for him. He had to find a way down to him. But first, he had to survive the coming storm.
Having thought the situation through, he felt better. He had all afternoon. He could dig a cozy snow cave here on this relatively flat ledge. Its position should protect it from avalanches. But, Christ, how could he tell? There was no precedent that he knew of for the way this mountain had behaved.
He began to dig, and was just finishing up the cave when the first snow began to fall. He crawled inside, made a cup of tea, then settled into his sleeping bag. It might be a long wait. Hours, if he were lucky. Days, if he weren’t. With the way things had gone so far today, he’d better count on the latter. He would have to conserve food and fuel, but even with miserly rations, he had only enough to last two more days. It was far more important to keep drinking than to eat, so he sorted out all the food that required rehydration and threw it away. He hated to leave trash on the mountain, but . . . ah hell, he picked the packets back up. He might die, but he wouldn’t die a litterbug. His mother had taught him that much.
Jeremiah began to feel a deep longing to see his parents once again. It had been years now. And his sister in California, even longer. Good middle-class folks.
How did somebody like me get strained out of these genes? he wondered. He’d gone to a fine copy of a fine Eastern private school. Seen what there was to be had by the rich and influential, and was none too impressed. And so he’d applied his ambitions elsewhere.
What a neat analysis. It had more open crevasses than a glacier in August. Living in the South seemed so long ago, so far away. It had no hold on him anymore. He was free. That was the thing, to let go of the past and be free. Except there was Charlie, his Texas connection. Charlie wouldn’t let go. And Mandy. He could never let go of Mandy, no matter how far he fell into the future and she, like an immovable stone, remained fixed in the past, set there forever. And Ánalia? What subtle ropes attached him to Ánalia?
