The Steady Running of the Hour

by Justin Go

  —Sixty atmospheres. A wonder it’s only half leaked. Feel any different?

  Price lifts a mittened hand tentatively. He shakes his head and breathes in deeper.

  —Bloody sorcery, Ashley croaks.

  The colonel looks up from his notebook.

  —You know, Walsingham, when we were last up here Price was forever talking about this chum of his. A climber who was up to all kinds of adventures in Arabia. I could swear I heard he’d discovered the pyramids of Giza.

  —Is that so?

  —And yet, here we are, a thousand miles from civilization, listening to Noel’s bloody tales over and again, and I haven’t heard you so much as mention the desert. And I’ve promised The Times twenty dispatches from the mountain, and it’s twenty dispatches they’ll get, even if I have to write profiles of everyone from Price to the bloody cobbler. So give me the facts. Were you there or not?

  —I was.

  —Where?

  Ashley clears his throat with a hacking cough.

  —All over. From Syria to Aden. A touch into Persia. But the interesting bit was in the south, around the edges of the Rub’ al Khali desert. The empty quarter.

  The colonel copies this into his notebook, carefully taking down the correct spelling of Rub’ al Khali.

  —Good. And what were you doing there? Archaeology?

  —I wouldn’t call it that. Epistemology would be more accurate. A bit of metaphysics—

  The colonel waves his pencil threateningly.

  —Don’t toy with me.

  —The trouble is that it’s hard to explain.

  —You give me the facts, I’ll do the explaining. Now why’d you go to begin with?

  —I went to Arabia, Ashley sighs, more to get away than to get somewhere. I was sick of Kenya and didn’t want to return to England. When I got to Arabia I knew no one, didn’t speak the language and didn’t know what I was looking for.

  —But you were, the colonel insists, looking for something.

  —Later on, yes. I was looking for Iram, supposedly a city of a thousand pillars, lost somewhere in the empty quarter. It’s mentioned in the Arabian Nights and the Qu’ran—

  —Slow down. I need to get this down.

  —There’s nothing to say about it, Ashley protests. I didn’t find anything. It was a farce.

  —You needn’t be testy. I only want the facts.

  —The facts, Ashley repeats with a grimace. The fact is that I went after something that doesn’t exist. It’s as if we went to all the trouble of climbing this mountain, nearly killing ourselves and spending piles of money, and when we got to the top there turned out not to be any summit. Not even a mountain, in fact. Not merely that the summit vanished, but that it had never existed, had been only the product of one’s vanity. And I knew I was a damned fool and should have stuck to climbing. It’s hardly a story for the papers.

  The colonel shuts his notebook. He raps his fingers on the oilskin cover.

  —I’m not coming up to Three today, he says curtly. You and Price take the porters up with Corporal Tebjir. Mills and I follow tomorrow. For God’s sake, don’t let the porters tear the equipment to hell with those crampon spikes. Mind they keep their feet up as they go.

  —Sir.

  The colonel squints up at the sun and pulls back his jacket sleeve to consult his wristwatch.

  —You fellows had better get moving. As it is, you’ll be in the trough at midday. Bloody time to be there, but I suppose it can’t be avoided.

  The colonel looks dubiously at Ashley’s broad-brimmed felt hat.

  —You ought to wear your topee.

  —I’ll make do. I’ve been in glacier troughs before.

  —Not this one. No atmosphere up there. That trough catches the noon sun and reflects it right back at you. Air doesn’t move at all. Does odd things to you.

  —All right.

  —One more thing, the colonel adds. You’ll think of something for me to write about you in the paper, and send it down with the next runner. If you don’t want Arabia, fine. But you will give me something, whether it’s planting coffee in Kenya or collecting bloody postage stamps.

  Ashley and Price unscrew crates of equipment for the journey to Camp III, counting out coiled ropes and crimson flags and hollow wooden stakes. A Gurkha corporal summons the porters for inspection, the line of small and sinewy men standing at attention with puffed chests. Many are missing equipment, supplies lost or stolen hundreds of miles behind in snowblown passes or humid jungles. Two porters have no glacier goggles. Several are without stockings in their boots, and one wizened Bhotia stands barefoot in the snow. Ashley issues new equipment from reserves and gives each man a pair of steel-and-leather crampons.

  Price stands on a crate to demonstrate the fastening of crampon straps over his boots, the Gurkha translating all the while. The porters fasten the buckles in unison. Ashley circles among the men. Kneeling and tugging Llakpa Chedi’s crampon strap, Ashley grimaces in disapproval. Llakpa Chedi is one of the “Tigers,” the strongest porters earmarked to carry loads to the highest camp. At this altitude Llakpa Chedi is a stronger climber than Ashley and both men know this.

  Ashley makes a squeezing motion with his hands. Llakpa Chedi smiles benignly.

  —Too tight, Ashley mutters. You’ll constrict your blood. Frostbite.

  Ashley loosens the stiff leather strap and refastens the buckle a few eyelets lower. Ashley looks up at Llakpa Chedi’s glittering onyx pupils, his smooth tawny face unmarred by the sun.

  —You won’t be grinning, Ashley wheezes, when you lose your toes.

  Price commands the porters to remove the colored woven garters from their legs. He makes a show of mixing the garters in an empty crate, then lays a garter on each load. The porters heft their burdens, tossing huge rucksacks over their shoulders, crouching and fastening leather straps over their foreheads, entire crates balanced on their spines. The old barefoot porter coos and breaks into song. Price calls to Ashley from the front of the line.

  —I’ll lead. You bring up the rear.

  The colonel barks encouraging words in Nepali, brandishing an aluminum tent stake like a swagger stick. Ashley stands beside him as the long column threads by, khaki-clad forms disappearing through a cleft in the ice wall.

  —Do you ever think, Ashley asks the colonel, that they know something we don’t?

  —Such as?

  —Hard to say. But they seem surer of something.

  —What on earth could they know?

  —They’ve all kinds of ideas. They say Price is marked for death. Only Sembuchi will walk behind him and only because Sembuchi’s madder than a march hare—

  —Rubbish, the colonel retorts. Even you know better than to spread such rot, even in jest.

  —Sir.

  The colonel sets off toward his tent, the stake clasped behind him. Suddenly he stops and looks back at Ashley.

  —Walsingham.

  —Sir.

  —The porters know they are paid to do this, the colonel says. But we do it for sport.

  The line of porters snakes along a valley of white shark’s teeth, perfect pyramids of sun-bleached ice. Ashley walks behind the swaying basket of the final porter, the load dwarfing the tiny man as it bobs stride by stride. They have entered the trough. The pinnacles begin as mere stumps at the tip of the valley; flowing down they are shaped by sun and wind, evaporated and sculpted into towering spires, their blue-green glimmer never intended to meet the eyes of men.

  The party struggles to find a path. In stifling air they grope for direction, halted by the lip of a bottomless black crevasse. They thread a line among an oval-shaped cathedral of emerald spires, the mirrored surfaces reflecting all bearings back upon them. Abruptly the column halts and Llakpa Chedi runs down to the line to Ashley, breathing heavily.

  —Price Sahib says to come.

  Ashley ascends the long column at double pace, his heart heaving in spasms. The porters stand with their burdens, sweat streaming down
their faces, their eyes following Ashley as he passes. Price waits in the shade of a towering fang-shaped berg, Corporal Tebjir panting beside him.

  —Rather far enough for the porters, Price says, don’t you think?

  —I’d say.

  Price turns to Tebjir.

  —The porters can rest here. Walsingham and I shall flag the rest of the route and come back down. Mind they don’t get too settled.

  Price and Walsingham set off alone. They follow a route over black moraine, then a field of powdery snow. Finally they step with crampon spikes onto the arrested river itself, a long azure tongue of ice. Ashley runs his hand along a pinnacle, his damp fingers sticking to the ice. Beneath the crystalline surface are shafts of milky white. He wonders if these are the supporting beams of the spire or mere fissures, the signature of countless tons bearing down upon the trough. Price points his ice axe between a pair of huge seracs.

  —This one should go.

  The climbers rope on to each other, Price in front, Ashley fixing his waist loop. Suddenly Ashley grins.

  —The trouble is that I’ve left everything to you in my will, Hugh. If you drag me into a crevasse—

  —Hush.

  They push forward, searching for a route through a maze of obstacles. They stop before vast bergs dropped in the center of their path; they ascend ice cliffs with strange enthusiasm, pleased by the rare challenge of genuine climbing. They hammer wooden pickets up ice walls and string rope through the eyelets, spiking red flags to mark a path. The pennants hang limp in the dormant air.

  A searing light reflects off all the ice, the rays passing through the smoked lenses of Ashley’s goggles, grinding at his brain in tandem with a sharp altitude headache until the effects are inseparable. His head is humming. It melts in time with the thousand-ton pinnacles, drips in sync with the great icicles, drifts along with the imperceptible slide of the glacier.

  They stop to rest among a forest of giant seracs, Price unroping and pulling off his smack. Ashley spikes his ice axe in the snow and sits on a heap of dark moraine.

  —Something’s on your mind, Price says. You’ve hardly spoken since breakfast.

  —Not worth the effort.

  —Come now, Price insists, something’s grating on you. What is it?

  Ashley swigs greedily from his flask. He corks the flask and wipes his brow, speaking in a dry whisper.

  —You remember that first lecture at Kensington Gore? During the war.

  Price looks at Ashley with surprise.

  —Not very well.

  —You were on leave. After the lecture you introduced me to a pair of sisters. Soames-Andersson. I spoke with the younger one. It was right before I went to France.

  Ashley throws one leg over his knee and chips the ice from the sole of his boot, testing with bare fingertips the sharpness of his crampon spikes. He says nothing more. Price frowns and peers up the glacier, the summit pyramid looming above.

  —Something happened with her? You never told me.

  —It didn’t last. We had a week together and after I got to France we wrote every day. When I was wounded she came to see me in hospital in Albert. We had a row. She left England. One could say she left to get away from me. That was eight years ago.

  Ashley blots his forehead with the sleeve of his wind suit.

  —I’ve wondered what it’s like to have it with you every day. I wonder if you live with it, if it becomes familiar and you take it for granted until it isn’t love anymore.

  Price shrugs. —It’s like this place. Some days it’s too damned familiar. Other days it’s strange and wonderful.

  Ashley shakes his head.

  —A fine bloody waste, isn’t it? Wanting something you can’t have. Not wanting what you’ve got.

  —You’ll get past it.

  The climbers rise and pick up their ice axes.

  —Shall we rope up? Ashley asks.

  —Probably no need—

  —Then let’s not bother.

  Price looks up the glacier.

  —I never knew about the girl. What was her name?

  —Imogen.

  Price nods. —You never told me.

  THE QUESTION

  Once an hour I leave the hostel and walk to the pay phone in the middle of Rosenthaler Platz to call Mireille. My flight to Reykjavík leaves at eight in the morning, but I didn’t get her e-mail until after I’d bought the plane ticket. Call me as soon as you get this, whenever you get this. So I go on calling every hour all night, because if I didn’t call on the hour I’d call more often.

  It’s always the same. I cross the street to the pay phone and lift the pink receiver, dropping a one-euro piece into the slot and resting a stack of coins on top of the phone. The phone hesitates, then connects with a faint ringing that goes on and on. I watch the people coming up and down Weinbergsweg with beer bottles in hand, talking in German or English or Spanish. Mireille never picks up.

  By three in the morning everyone in Rosenthaler Platz knows me: the girl at the hostel’s front desk who gives me a drowsy smile when I walk out; the burly Turkish man who stands in the door of the kiosk smoking cigarettes; the Vietnamese cook at the all-night Asia Imbiss who has given up trying to wave me inside for a meal, but still grins every time he sees me. All of them know I’m going to the pay phone.

  At four o’clock the sky is lightening and I’ll be leaving for the airport in two hours. This time Mireille picks up.

  —I’m sorry, she answers breathlessly. I went out and my phone died. I just got home and plugged it in.

  —You said to call right away.

  —I know, but I was going crazy waiting. Claire came over and we went for a walk along the river—

  —You’re back in Paris?

  —Yes. Are you still in Berlin?

  —I’m about to leave.

  The Canadians from my hostel pass by on the sidewalk. They tap the glass casing of the phone and wave at me. I wave back. Mireille’s voice is quieter.

  —Where are you going?

  I grip the receiver with both hands.

  —It doesn’t matter. It’ll be over in a couple weeks, I can go to Paris if you still want me to—

  —So you’re still searching, she sighs. Tristan, I’m sorry how I acted at the station. I thought if you went away and I went back to Paris I could forget about all this, but it hasn’t worked. I need to tell you something. I should have said it while you were in France, but I was afraid to.

  Mireille hesitates. I drop in more coins.

  —I believe you about the English couple, she says. But all this about the lawyers and the money. Ce n’est pas possible. You need to see that. The first night when you told me about it in the bar, I told myself I shouldn’t go to Picardie with you. But when we got to the métro I invited you anyway. Maybe I thought that even if you were a little crazy it didn’t matter, because I was just happy to be with you. But now that I know you and I care about you, and I see what this is doing to you—

  —It’s true. I’ve met the lawyers.

  —But what do you really know about them? If there’s so much money involved, why don’t they find the evidence themselves, or hire someone to find it?

  —The trust says they can’t hire anyone—

  —And they give you only two months? C’est fou. And the letters, it was too simple, as if someone put them there for us to find. Tristan, I don’t trust the lawyers. I don’t trust their story. And I don’t like that you’re so far away when none of it makes sense. I wish you hadn’t left France—

  —I can come back.

  —That’s not the point. The point is I’m worried and I want you to forget about this search. Cent millions de francs suisses? C’est une connerie. You must know that, if you can admit it to yourself.

  —I know it’s real. Ashley and Imogen are real—

  —They may have been real once, Mireille says, but they’re gone now. You and I, we’re the only part of this that matters. You’re worried you’ll lose the mo
ney if you stop looking, but if you keep going—

  The phone makes a beeping sound. I drop in a few more coins.

  —What’s that? Mireille asks.

  —I’m at a pay phone. It takes a lot of coins to call a French cell phone. We don’t have long.

  —Tell me where you’re going.

  —Iceland.

  Mireille says nothing. I press the receiver against my ear, the last coin in my other hand. The reverse has a picture of tree and the inscription LIBERTÉ ÉGALITÉ FRATERNITÉ.

  —It doesn’t make sense, Mireille finally says. You know it doesn’t make sense.

  —I can’t explain now, you just have to trust me. If you’d seen what I’ve seen—

  The phone beeps again. I drop in the coin.

  —This is terrible, Mireille says. Just come back. I don’t care how you get here.

  I lean against the phone booth. I don’t know what to say.

  —You’ll come, Tristan, won’t you?

  The phone beeps again.

  —Tell me if you’ll come, Mireille says. I need to know if I should wait.

  The phone chimes and the line goes dead. Cursing, I slam the receiver down. I walk up the street and wander into a deserted park, circling a pond and trying to figure out what I can do. There doesn’t seem any choice.

  I go back to the hostel and type Mireille an e-mail, promising I’ll come to Paris as soon as I can. The message doesn’t come out right, so I keep rewriting it over and over, knowing that I’ll miss my flight if I don’t leave soon. I click SEND and shoulder my backpack, dashing across the street and into the U-Bahn station.

  At a bookstore at Tegel Airport I buy a thick copy of The Icelandic Sagas and I sit near the airplane gate, my backpack between my knees. The brooch is in my pocket. I open the book and try to concentrate.

  10 May 1924

  Camp III, 21,000 feet

  East Rongbuk Glacier, Tibet

  An inch of powdery snow covers every surface in the tent. Ashley and Price sit on the windward side, pushing their backs against the flapping canvas to anchor it in the gale. Their camp is a cluster of tents pitched below an ice cliff at 21,000 feet, only the thin sheet of weatherproofed canvas separating them from the blizzard. Ashley sits with his legs in his sleeping bag, the gabardine shell stiff and coated with ice.