Tell me you love me, Jozef said. I have to go now.
We have an understanding, Jozef and I. He must focus himself for a climb. He needs to know that I love him, that all is right with us. If he is to survive, he cannot go to the mountain angry, or distracted.
But I said, Please don’t do this. There is no shame in turning around. Come home to me.
Ani, he said, tell me.
Even over our little phones I could hear the anguish in his voice. Once he had told me, Do you know how I make it up the mountains? I pretend they are between you and me. I pull myself to you with my hands. But I was twenty-one when he told me that. Back then I believed we had magic powers, the two of us.
If it keeps you from going, I said, I won’t tell you.
I’m going. We’ve talked about this.
I knew he would. He is still alive only because of his stubbornness.
I was crying. I told him, I love you, and the words felt like a defeat.
I love you, too, he said. And then he said what he always must, our mantra, Ani, as long as you love me I will be all right.
I was supposed to say, See you soon. I wanted to scream at him, to smash the phone against the wall.
Jozef, I said, this is the last time.
I held the phone to my side and walked into the living room, where Stane was waiting for me to be finished.
Tell your papa you love him, I said. Say goodbye.
Four days ago I was so angry I felt I might shake apart. Now I can barely shut away the shame, the awful shame. He might die—no matter the reason—and I am too selfish to tell him that I love him?
I used to think Jozef and I were made for one another.
Now, for very different reasons, I see that we still are.
II.
When Karel first arrived at our house, he and I made plans to visit his and Jozef’s father. Karel has been calling him all along with updates about Jozef’s climb—but Papa is a difficult man, and we are never sure what he hears and what he doesn’t. It’s only proper to make a visit.
Papa lives an hour from here, outside of Maribor, and we leave in the early morning. I am in a foul mood as I direct us around the house. My head aches; if I slept at all I do not know it. Stane whines about taking a bath, and I am harsh with him, which only puts him in more of a sulk. Karel, ever helpful, offers to drive. We are just walking out of the door when Hugo calls.
He’s at the ridge, Hugo tells me. We saw him when the sun came up. He’s made a camp.
A camp? Is he climbing on?
You know what I do, Hugo says. But listen, he climbed all through the night to get there. He’s going to need rest no matter what he does, especially now that he’s on level ground. If he makes a move up or down, we won’t see his lamp till evening.
I tell Stane and Karel all of this in the car. Karel nods as he listens.
I bet he’s going to the top, Stane says.
Why do you think that?
I don’t know. He’d have come down already if he wasn’t.
Well, I say, maybe he’s tired.
Maybe, says Stane. I have a feeling.
Stane likes to say he has feelings; he wants badly to believe he has supernatural powers. We have tried to discourage this; the last feeling he got was that he was going to get a bicycle for his birthday, when he had already gotten one the year before.
Both Stane and I sleep through most of the drive to Papa’s. I do not even dream, and then Karel is touching my arm. Ani, we’re here, he says.
Papa’s house is small and dark, a cottage on a road that used to be lonely, but now is lined with houses. Jozef told me the city came to Papa, not the other way around.
Papa meets us at the door and gives us all bear hugs, making bear sounds. He smells like cigarettes and too much cologne. He is almost eighty years old, completely bald. He has Jozef’s eyes, which are icy blue—but in Papa’s head they are hard, frightening. Maybe this is because I know how growing up with him was. Papa seems to like me, but sometimes he looks at me, and I shiver, because he knows what I must know.
Inside we sit at the dining-room table, and Papa putters between us and the kitchen. Coffee? he asks. You must be tired.
That sounds wonderful, I say.
How about you, Stane? You want some coffee, too?
He’s not allowed coffee unless it’s weak, I say.
Oh no no, strong coffee, says Papa. Strong coffee makes a strong man. Papa ruffles Stane’s hair. Stane looks to me in a way that is half hopeful, half frightened. We can put a little sugar in it, Papa says to him. Sugar for my sugar!
Okay, says Stane.
Papa, Karel says. You’re not his mother.
Papa frowns at Karel, then glances my way, a dark look, and for a second or two I can see it, I can see something of what Jozef must have seen so often when he was a boy. But Papa is an old man, and much has changed for him, and so his face softens. He nods at Karel.
He says, Yes, yes. Boys today are not like they used to be. Milk, then? You want milk, Stane?
Stane does not know how to answer, and he looks at me again, imploring.
I say, Milk would be fine, Papa. Say thank you, Stane.
Thank you, Grandpapa.
Karel says, Let me help you, Papa.
Mama, can I have some of yours? Stane whispers, when they’re in the kitchen.
I tell him just a sip, but I’m watching Karel and Papa through the doorway. Karel is helping with dishes and cups, moving as he moves in my kitchen—with an eagerness, like a waiter moves around a table. Papa grumbles and sometimes glances back and forth, confused. Karel guides him with touches on the shoulder, little jokes about what health nuts Jozef and I are, about how old Papa is getting, how he’ll have to go to a home any day now. What a bad son you are, Papa growls.
I whisper to Stane that his grandpapa is only kidding.
If Jozef was here we would never have gotten past the offer of coffee. We would be listening to an argument, or maybe we would be staring at Jozef refusing to drink the cup in front of him, all of us quiet before the battle of wills.
I can see so much of these men they cannot see themselves. Jozef and Gaspar both fought Papa. They left home the moment they could, each of them a teenager. Karel is the youngest; he was still at home when their mother died. Karel and Papa went through her dying together. I did not know her, but I know Karel takes after her. He knows Papa must be flattered and cajoled, not fought. Through the doorway Papa laughs and rubs his hand along Karel’s back. I have never seen Jozef and his father do anything more than shake hands, each looking off in different directions.
The coffee comes, and since Karel made it, it is drinkable. I mix some with Stane’s milk, careful to keep the grounds out, and he is happy, though he works to keep his face from crinkling when he sips. Then Papa insists we take our cups outside to the back patio. Today the air is fine and warm, and the patio is a good place to be. The backyard, though, is unkempt, especially compared to the one next door, which we can see through a line of pine trees that acts as a fence. Two children are playing in that yard, the oldest a boy Stane’s age. They have a sandbox and a complicated wooden fort and colorful toys. They see us and call out a greeting to Papa, and he waves them over.
This is my grandson Stane, he says to them. The one I told you about—he’s a good boy. You three can play, yes? Stane would like your fort.
This decided, he crosses his arms and nods for the children to leave.
Stane looks at me—he does not have many playmates when school is out, not where we live, and he is shy with strangers. I wish that he would be more forceful in front of Papa. It’s all right, I tell him. Go on.
The children from next door, thankfully, are friendly. Come on, Stane, they say. Come see.
Papa says to me, when they are in the other yard, You treat that boy like a baby.
Karel says, Papa.
Papa pushes out his lips.
You’re right, he says. What do I know of raising
boys? Eh? Two lunatics and a teacher.
He says teacher, not professor, and he says it with a sneer.
Papa, I say—I cut off Karel to do it. If you’d like us to leave you alone today, we will.
Again, the look, but I’m ready for it. I hold his eyes, and, surprised, he grows old again. His shoulders slump and he stares out across his yard, the piles of stone and the flower beds that in twenty years have produced nothing but weeds. The children are playing on the wooden fort. A nice, happy family, it seems from here. Papa must sit on his patio and watch them every day, the two children, the two parents I am sure are there inside the house. He hears all the laughter.
Well then, he says. How is my Jozef? He is still alive?
I tell Papa the story of Jozef’s climb so far. I have brought the file folder of photographs, and he asks to see them. I stand behind Papa’s chair—ignoring his too sweet, too smoky smell—and point out the route up the face, the places where Jozef has camped, the ridge which, if Jozef is sane, he will use today to abandon the climb. Papa puts on reading glasses and looks at the photographs over and over, his lips pushed out.
It’s as if he reads my thoughts. He points to the photograph and asks, He’s here?
Yes.
He won’t come down the ridge, Papa says.
Maybe, I say, maybe not—
Papa takes my hand and stares at me. Then he says, Karel, leave us alone for a minute.
Papa, I really—
Karel! Mind me, for once. Do me this one favor and then I promise I’ll die and leave you in peace.
Karel’s face clouds, but he comes closer, as if to pry the old man’s hand off mine.
It’s all right, I say.
Karel meets my eyes, then says, All right, all right. He walks off into the yard, halfway between us and the children, and pretends to be interested in the weeds.
Sit, Papa says to me. You sit and we’ll talk.
I pull up a chair.
Listen, Papa says. You are a good strong woman. I have always seen this. When Jozef brought you home, I knew you were a woman to love and to marry. You are good for him, the way my Sara was good for me. But the men of my family, we are good for no one.
Papa—
No! Listen. This is important. I have been a bad father, a bad husband. All of my life I’ve been bad. My sons were good boys but I’ve ruined them. I know. Sara told me when she was dying. I saw it when it was too late. I have lost Gaspar, and soon I will lose Jozef. This is God’s punishment for me. I keep living and my sons will keep dying.
Papa, I say, please don’t say that. Because as he speaks I feel a chill up and down my arms. His eyes are red-rimmed and his voice a rasp. He sounds to me both crazy and very sane, all at once.
I taught him everything, Papa says. Jozef will not turn away. He wants to go to the top. He wants to prove himself. You know why I know? All his boyhood I told him he was nothing. I know what he thinks. Look at me now, Papa. Look at what I have done. And if he was a banker or a doctor he would be right to do it. But I made him crazy, and look at how he tries to prove himself!
Papa thumps the file folder on my knee.
I thought maybe you were the one to stop him, Papa says. I thought: Here is a woman who will keep him on the ground. And then you had your wonderful son. Such a good boy! You are right to be cautious with him, I should learn this. I am leaving Stane everything, you know.
Papa shakes his head, and I am trying not to cry.
He says, his voice trembling, Jozef is wasting you, and the boy. I have tried to tell him. But he won’t listen, no one listens.
I try, I say to Papa. I try to tell him.
Papa gives me a look, both pained and shrewd.
Maybe. But maybe you spoil him, eh? Maybe you spoil both your little men.
Stane is in the yard, calling Papa’s name and laughing. He has something in his hand—I can’t see what it is. Papa calls to him and Stane runs toward us, loose-limbed, cheeks red.
You listen to me, Ani, Papa says, and then Stane is in front of him. Papa seizes him under one arm, and tickles him with his free hand and says, You love Grandpapa? Say it, say you love your grandpapa, say it, say it, yes?
I love my grandpapa! Stane shrieks.
This is good, Papa says, holding Stane between his big hands, kissing his hair. His eyes flicker to mine and then back again, and he says, Because your grandpapa loves you.
WE LEAVE Papa’s house at dusk. Stane is already drowsy, and we are not on the road twenty minutes before he is asleep in the backseat. Karel drives without speaking, and I do not break the silence either.
Papa is right. If Shipton’s Peak doesn’t kill Jozef, some other mountain will. So much is random, up there. Jozef tells me Gaspar was the better climber, after all—and Gaspar is gone, vanished, without even a body to bury.
He died just after Jozef and I were married. Even while we dated, he and Gaspar were planning an expedition: the southeast pillar of Annapurna III, knife-edged and vertical. He and Gaspar would go up quick and light, succeeding where everyone else had failed. And in any event they did well—so well that, near the top, on mixed ground, they followed two solo lines, unroped. We were racing, Jozef told me.
Jozef reached the mountain’s shoulder. He waited and waited for Gaspar, but Gaspar never arrived. The weather they’d enjoyed all week began to turn. Jozef’s base camp told him to come down. But he could not bring himself to abandon Gaspar.
He told me, soon after, shame-faced, Finally they told me that if I didn’t come down, you’d end up a widow.
Jozef spent the night abseiling down, struggling for hours through the blizzard. By the time he reached the camp he was frostbitten and delirious. He told me that he had heard my voice in the coldest parts of the storm. I told him, he said, to keep going, that I loved him.
I have learned now not to be shocked, when I see Jozef after a climb. Even one that has gone well leaves him emaciated, windburned, covered with cracks and sores. His hands are always rough—he maintains them that way, for friction on the rocks—but by the end of a climb they are almost always bandaged, swollen into stiff mitts.
But I was not prepared for what I saw after Annapurna III. The Jozef I had married was ruddy, bearded, bulging with muscle. The man in the hospital bed in Kathmandu was too thin, his weak chin shaved bare, his eyes heavy-lidded and dull from painkillers and grief. The corners of his mouth turned down like an old man’s. Flaps of skin hung from his cheeks, and from his nose. His hands were wrapped in gauze.
He could barely lift his arms to hold me. When I put my cheek next to him he started to moan and sob.
I listened, he kept saying. And, Gaspar’s gone, he’s gone.
I love you so much, I told him. I’m here. You’re home now.
Only then did he smile—and when he did, his lips cracked and began to bleed down his chin.
WELL INTO THE DRIVE home from Papa’s, the cell phone rings. Karel looks at me and pulls the car over to the side of the road while I answer.
He’s going to the summit, Hugo says into my ear. He reached the ridge and then a few hours later he flashed his light. He’s traversing back to the headwall. He must have seen a route.
I suppose I should have known, I say.
Listen, Ani, he climbed beautifully today. Just beautifully. I think he’ll be fine.
Hugo is a fool, and I don’t care very much what he thinks. I know too that he is in love with Jozef, that to him any decision Jozef makes is the right one. He has made his bargain like I have.
I hope you’re right, I say. Give me a call when you know something.
I will Don’t worry, all right? This is Jozef. He doesn’t make mistakes.
I can’t say anything to this. I turn off the phone. Stane has not stirred in the backseat. I hide my face so that Karel can’t see it. I look into the reflection of my own eyes in the passenger window, and the sight is enough to make me stop. In the window I am a ghost, just an outline of a woman, not anyone who feels an
ything.
At the house Karel carries Stane inside. Stane puts his arms around Karel’s neck but never really wakes. In his bedroom I take off Stane’s clothes; he’s a rag doll. I kiss his damp forehead and then walk into the kitchen. Karel is sitting at the table, drumming his fingertips.
Are you all right? Karel asks.
We had the conversation earlier this week, about what a terribly stupid question this is, but all the same he still asks it of me, and with him I am not angry. No, I say.
I’ll leave you alone if—
No, I say, and sit down next to him. No. I’m too worked up. I haven’t been sleeping anyway.
Me neither. Are you sad or angry?
I say, Both. And terrified. All three and none at all. I don’t know.
I look at Karel, then tell him what Papa told me tonight.
Karel says, The old man sees more than he used to.
Then a look crosses his face. Papa and Karel spoke alone for a while, too. I wonder what it was Papa said to him. Did Papa spot Karel watching me, or me watching him?
May I tell you something? Karel asks.
My stomach goes in a knot, but I nod anyway.
Papa guessed a secret, Karel says. Marja has left me. It happened two weeks ago. We are going ahead with a divorce.
Karel. You should have told me.
No. Karel twines his fingers together and stares at them. No, I didn’t want to distract you with it.
You think about others too much. I pat his hands and say, Really, I want to know.
There’s a half bottle of wine in the refrigerator, and I set it on the table, then fetch glasses. Karel pours.
He says, Marja has taken a lover—she has had him for a year. A friend told me two months ago. I shouldn’t have been surprised—we have been sleeping in different beds for longer than that. I never confronted her—maybe I didn’t want to believe it. Then last month Marja went away for the weekend, on a trip with this man, and told me lies to my face about what she was doing. Contemptuous lies, and I realized, finally—all this time she has been taunting me. Certainly she has not been discreet.
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