The Boys of Everest

by Clint Willis

  They rose before light. They had no notion of dates. They packed slowly and were away at last in hopes that their strength would return as they moved. The night had done them no good. The crest of the ridge was impassable here. They moved back onto the East Face; here all was steep snow, very exposed. They roped up and moved together; they had to cover ground as quickly as they could.

  Peter went ahead. He lost track of time and grew confused as to his whereabouts. The slope fell back and then reared up again. He knew he was going very slowly. He felt himself wading against a tide. The snow under his boots was frozen and still; even so, it seemed to flow under him in an imitation of perfection—of silence. He stood on the snow like some baffled maker of miracles, unsure of his role in making this happen. He felt the rope at his waist and turned to look for Joe, to solicit his company.

  JOE LIKED CLIMBING. He liked even this punishment. He stopped and teetered in his tracks in the snow. He had lost for the moment any notion of the future; the summit of the mountain had ceased to exist. His weariness was a great blanket thrown across his head and shoulders. He had felt something like this before—the claustrophobia that came with great fatigue, obliterating any notion that he was of a piece with the greater world, with the immense chamber of light that surrounded him here like the room that surrounds a goldfish in a glass bowl.

  He had sometimes thought of God as a sort of older cousin, someone who for the sake of some distant connection would protect him from the most terrible shame or suffering that could befall a person. His physical misery filled him with dread in part because it undermined any such idea; it seemed to indicate that such fantasies were not merely incorrect, but contemptible. His weakness frightened him. His body was a cage but also a home to him; if it failed or collapsed he would be released into this immensity.

  The notion worried him here in this place that looked like heaven had looked in his many imaginings. He thought he could remember praying in his room at seminary and seeing something like this: the white ridge that led up into a sky that was almost the color of the snow; the white slope that fell away more than twelve thousand feet to the invisible glacier.

  He did not have to lift his head to see any of it now. He stared down at the place where his shadow turned the snow dark. He felt his weariness recede—long enough for a single breath—and he made an effort to use this reprieve to concentrate, to move, to perform his favorite action in life.

  He shifted his weight onto his left boot and bent his right knee and kicked a new step in the snow. He stood upon it but the step was too shallow; the snow beneath his boot collapsed and he began to slide.

  He had imagined falling. He had played with stories about it; had dreamed of it. He was curious and in his fatigue he let this unfold, wishing for a hint of a revelation but meaning to put an end to it, assuming that he would know when. This all happened very quickly; time picking up speed, moving water gathered into a narrower avenue at some brink.

  He rolled onto his stomach and dug his axe into the snow and it stopped him. He lay there for a moment and then he began to shake; he had rescued everything he knew but it amounted to nothing—his mind was empty.

  He tried to rise and found he could not stand; his strength had spilled from him with his knowledge. He lay and waited for something to happen to him; he felt a great curiosity and with it some of his strength, a faded echo, returned to warm him.

  He lay still, feeling this new warmth flicker and fade into more emptiness. He heard Peter’s voice; it echoed like words in an empty cathedral.

  CHRIS ROSE ON the morning of May 18 and left his tent. He went to the telescope that stood in the dirt at the fringes of Advance Base Camp. He saw no one on the ridge. There was little wind and the sky was clear.

  They could be out of sight behind the Second Pinnacle, which dominated the ridge for several hundred meters. But the snow on the East Face was very steep. They’d want to cross back to the near side of the ridge as soon as they could. This would bring them back into sight and might restore radio contact.

  Chris and Adrian left Charlie a note that spelled out the situation, and set out again for the North Col. Chris stopped every ten minutes or so and lifted his binoculars to gaze at the mountain. His view of the ridge was excellent from here. Still there was no sign of Joe or Peter.

  His fear had gathered itself and now it rushed at him. He remembered looking up from a list in a shop when Rupert and Daniel were small. He remembered the wretchedness that had seized him then—the sense that he had let those two stray from his protection. His ambitions collapsed now and he was left with only dread laced by the sweetness of his wish to see Peter and Joe, to hear their voices.

  Adrian broke trail again. The snow had blown over their steps from two days before. They reached their high point near the North Col at six o’clock. They stopped here for the night, digging a platform at the edge of an enormous drop. The evening view swam across glaciers and up to the black of the Northeast Ridge. The night sky remained empty of cloud. There was no wind. Chris didn’t want to be a fool; he felt his fears recede.

  Chris and Adrian reached the North Col in the morning. They were pleased with themselves. They congratulated one another and made camp. The col provided a perfect view of the Northeast Ridge and also across to the tents and fixed ropes of the American team at work on the North Face.

  There was no sign of Joe or Peter. They had been out of sight for almost two days. They should have come back into view. Adrian saw figures moving around Advance Base Camp late in the day. He thought perhaps Joe and Peter had descended the ridge—but there were three figures, not two. Chris got out the radio and reached Charlie Clarke, who had walked back up from camp with two porters.

  Chris told Charlie of his worries. Charlie remembered Kongur. He’d almost given up on Chris and the others during their second summit attempt, but they’d returned. He thought of Nick, waiting for Chris to come down from the Ogre. He remembered Mick Burke on Everest—how Peter had waited for him.

  May 20, another perfect day: summit weather. Adrian scanned the ridge in the evening and spotted a tent. It sat on a line that ran down from the Third Pinnacle to the North Face. Chris allowed himself to hope. They would arrive, both of them, all but done in; there would be explanations, tears of joy.

  The next morning there was no movement near the tent. And now in the light of morning Chris and Adrian acknowledged that it was the wrong shape and color. A French expedition had visited the north side of the peak the previous year; the tent might have belonged to them.

  Joe and Pete had now been missing for four days. Chris began to experiment with stories that might explain their disappearance. It seemed unlikely that both of them had collapsed; they were so strong, particularly Peter. One of them might have fallen—but then where was his partner? Chris began to imagine that they’d fallen roped together; Joe or Peter might have slipped and pulled the other to his death. Or a snow slope might have avalanched and carried them down the East Face.

  Chris and Adrian left the North Col the next day. They left behind the tent and radio, with food and cooking gear and a note for their two friends. A wind rose as they descended. They were very tired. They unroped on the glacier and Chris went ahead. Charlie was at work with the two Tibetans who had come up to Advance Base Camp to help with the packing. He came out of camp to meet Chris.

  Chris spoke before Charlie could: They’ve had it.

  He was just trying it out; it was partly a question.

  Charlie said: I know.

  They fell into each other’s arms and wept for their loss but also in fear of what lay ahead. They would need to tell the story; they would be required to explain and they knew this to be impossible.

  PETER WHEN HE turned to look for Joe saw the body in the snow and for an instant it was a vision of peace; he wished to lie down himself and call an end to this effort, this illness. In the moment before he knew he must act he stood and listened and heard only the sound of his breathing. He
liked being here.

  An empty beat of time, and now he was afraid and sick at heart but only dimly; his fear and his sickness were insignificant in the context of his desire to be of use to the person who lay in the snow. Peter retreated in his own steps, following the strand of rope to where Joe had fallen, and kicked a platform for himself and squatted to examine him. Joe seemed to be asleep and Peter felt the pull of sleep and also a reluctance to disturb his friend. Joe lay on his stomach, his axe still clutched in his mittens, his head turned to the side; he had settled into the snow so that it looked as though he had been dropped from a significant height.

  Peter took up some of the slack in the rope and used it to make a series of loops across his own chest; he left perhaps a dozen feet of rope between himself and his partner. He sat next to Joe and was tempted to lie down but instead he put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and gently shook him. Joe opened his eyes revealing to Peter an expression blank and distant yet somehow urgent and appealing, as if wishing to share—to receive or to convey—some understanding. The urgency faded and Joe rose to his hands and knees, and looked into his friend’s face again, Joe’s eyes friendly but shot through with blood, and this time smiled and spoke with a lucid muttering that calmed but did not reassure Peter: I fell asleep.

  Peter’s throat was dry; it was not worth the effort to talk. He patted Joe’s arm and stood up on his narrow snow platform and put on his pack, careful not to drop it. He had plunged the shaft of his axe into the snow as an anchor. He gripped its head with his left hand; in his right he held coils of the rope that now stretched between them. He stood waiting to see what Joe would decide. He watched his friend as if from a vastly remote vantage point—the summit of this mountain, perhaps, still very far away.

  Joe stood and swayed briefly but now Peter had lifted his axe and set off. He kicked still deeper steps than before and kept the rope taut between them. Peter stopped after each new step to half-turn to see if Joe would follow. They came to gently sloping ground on the crest of the ridge and Peter stood and listened and again there was only the sound of his breathing. He sat down and watched Joe follow his last half-dozen steps at a pace that seemed slower than glacial—occupying eons. Peter had a pleasant and curious sense of his own permanence; he could sit here forever and watch this unfold. He peered down and across the unclimbed East Face; its beauty made him dizzy. The sun’s glare on its snows dazzled and nearly blinded him. No creature across all the span of time had stood here and seen this but it was known—all of it—to all of them. The world held no secrets.

  Joe reached Peter and knelt in the snow for a moment and fell forward with no apparent effort to stop what was happening. Peter watched him like a man watches something through a window and again felt a brief spurt of envy but roused himself and stood and moved across to roll Joe over onto his back so that Joe’s face was to the sky, so that he could see and breathe. The rope between them grew tangled as Peter went about his work. He put something under Joe’s head. He thought he should put up the tent and light the stove to make tea, but there was a wind and he lost interest; the notion of doing such things seemed far-fetched, an idea from a fairy tale. He remembered the comfortable feeling of listening to stories as a child, later reading and then writing other stories; it struck him now that the stories were all the same. Peter spoke to Joe, not to comfort him but rather to accompany him—to engage and retain Joe as a companion.

  JOE DIDN’T RESPOND. He was asleep. He was dreaming. In his dream he had fallen again only this time he didn’t roll over and sink his axe into the snow. He just pawed at the snow with his axe as he’d seen beginners do, as if it didn’t matter what happened to him. He made to shout for Peter—not for help, only goodbye—but stopped himself; Peter might turn to see and the sight would almost certainly trouble him. And anyway there wasn’t time; Joe wanted to laugh at how everything moved so fast, so fast; he was a waterfall thundering into the sea. He tried again to shout but was prevented. He lapsed into silence and saw in the distance lightning: silent flickers, shapes of backlit clouds.

  He felt lonely already but he heard a voice very close and opened his eyes and saw Peter looking down into his face. Peter looked stricken, but there was no need for that; Joe was unutterably weary of such goings-on. He frowned gently and made to shake his head and closed his eyes again. He had been right: He understood nothing.

  There was nothing to understand.

  PETER REMEMBERED A parent leaving him at someone’s house when he was a child—the sense of betrayal and of possibility. He remembered a day in New Guinea with Hilary when he had seen the world as sheer wonder. He had believed then that there was nothing else to know or conclude—only this bliss of existence. He thought of his father, and then of Mick Burke walking up that ridge—it was just over the summit from here—seven years gone. Mick had been up here all that time. He wasn’t far. Peter felt a flutter of despair. He felt his solitude—he wanted to talk to Chris and Charlie and the rest, to tell them about Joe.

  He wanted to tell Hilary. There had been her letter about the avalanche near Leysin. He pictured her standing up in the snow, her heart hammering the blood through her body, the heat of a dying day on her face. The image was unbearably beautiful; its beauty rose up to smite him with the understanding that it was not Hilary he loved but the life in her—there was nothing to her or to any of them but that life and the wildness of it.

  Peter stood and blinked until his vision cleared. Chris would be looking for them. He didn’t want Chris to know about this. He felt ill and sad again.

  He needed to make a decision. He needed to think—but for some reason he could only imagine, and what he imagined, what he saw, was a familiar figure in red, his own figure, climbing back down the ridge. He wanted to go down but even more to go backward in time. He thought of his first climb with Chris. He hadn’t known then what would come of it. Mick hadn’t known. Nor Joe. They had all of them covered their ears and hummed some loud tune because they had wanted this. Peter wanted it even now.

  He couldn’t leave Joe yet. He should have begun his descent of the ridge but instead he stood there and swayed, a sapling in a breeze. He felt the sun on him. There was still no wind. He would find his way down to Chris and Charlie in the morning.

  He sat down near Joe’s body. He rested, leaning back into the snow, and thought. He remembered various objects—he kept picturing his cassette player. He was cold but it didn’t trouble him much. Joe’s departure had become more difficult to believe. Peter’s grief lifted as fear lifts in a nightmare when the narrative becomes less plausible. He thought he should do some work.

  There seemed to be no work for him to do here. This discovery came as a relief to him. He remained sitting in the snow and after a time the sense of being in a dream lifted and he felt the fear of his death upon him like an animal upon an animal. He leaned away from it and turned his face and closed his eyes. Nothing happened. He felt calm again but he didn’t bother to open his eyes.

  He opened them in darkness, very cold. He stood again as if to leave. There was no reason to wait for morning to begin his further descent of the ridge. There was nothing to pack or remember. He liked this freedom. He took a few steps in no particular direction and the rope to Joe came tight and Peter stopped, surprised. He sat back down and settled into the snow and looked up at the sky and tried to fall asleep again.

  He couldn’t yet. He was shy in the presence of his grief, of what he now understood to be the emptiness of things and stories. And yet he thought vaguely of his or someone else’s unborn children. He imagined them finding him here: skin dried and drawn up on his bones, hair gone white. It wasn’t ugly but it frightened them. He wished to comfort them, but he had only himself to comfort. He set about it.

  He thought about what he often thought about when it was hard to sleep: random moments, certain faces, kicking steps in snow. He lay in the snow now and tried to remember it all. He called to mind one time in particular. The day was very warm; the
rock was some kind of granite. He’d come up a shady corner and onto a slab, still in shade, but now a short scramble took him into the sun. He smelled the warm rock. He drifted. He remembered more granite: a perfect little hand crack that took him to a little tree. Someone had wrapped nylon slings around the trunk to make an anchor: yellow, red, green; the colors hurt his eyes but he didn’t look away.

  EPILOGUE

  CHRIS BONINGTON, AGE fifty, emerged from a tent on the South Col of Everest very early on the morning of April 21, 1985, to gaze about him in the oddly familiar darkness. It was not yet two o’clock, but he’d been awake for three hours; it had taken him and his companions all this time to melt snow for tea, to pack and dress in the cold and dark at 8,000 meters. Every task, every movement, was awkward; crouching half out of their sleeping bags, rummaging through stuff bags, pulling on half-frozen boots, careful to keep hands and feet from freezing.

  Now he stood and watched the other shapes. There were six climbers in all; each headlamp made a small world so that they were like the stars of some galaxy, bound together by what passed for proximity in the greater darkness. Chris felt almost entirely alone. This was his fourth visit to the mountain, but it was not at all like the other times.

  A Sherpa led the party toward the looming bulk of the mountain’s Southeast Ridge. Chris followed. He soon fell behind. He felt the familiar heaviness of high altitude, compounded now by his age; it was difficult even to walk here. Once the others stopped to rest or to keep him in sight, only to resume walking as he approached. Chris understood their impatience but he felt profoundly alone until one of the Norwegians—it was Odd Eliassen—noticed and came back to offer to climb behind him. Chris had slumped in the snow; now he stood and followed the other climbers’ steps in snow that grew deeper as the party moved higher on the ridge.