The Ice Soldier

by Paul Watkins

  While I waited for the modifications to be completed, I kept myself busy with the final preparations, coiling ropes, checking the spring mechanisms on carabiners, searching for faults in the cloth of our tents, and pawing through the first-aid kit to memorize its contents.

  One week later, I received a call from the metalsmith saying that the work was done. “It looks like a rocket,” he said.

  He was quite right about that, and it wasn’t long before the papers began to refer to the coffin as “Carton’s Rocket.” Editorials appeared, debating whether inspiration for the design had come from Sir William Congreve’s 1805 pattern rocket or the one designed by William Hale in 1846 or Werner von Braun’s V-2. It was not surprising that by the time Stanley and I set out upon our journey we had become known, for better or worse, as the Rocket Men.

  NINE

  AFTER AN OVERNIGHT CROSSING of the Channel, we arrived in Calais before dawn. By that afternoon, we were in Paris, with barely any time to spare before catching a connecting train to Geneva.

  It had been twelve years since I’d last set foot in the Gare du Nord, but the place seemed much the same, echoing with the voices of announcers and the chugging stamp of train engines. The damp, smoky smell of the trains mixed with the aromas of coffee and strong, cigarlike French tobacco, climbing in a fog towards the glass-paned roof.

  Stanley and I made our way across the platform, carrying our mountaineering rucksacks, coils of rope across our chests and ax-head climbing sticks in hand.

  Stanley sported a heavy moleskin cap which he had bought at Lillywhites. The gray-green cap flopped down over his ears, and its brim seemed to be balanced on the bridge of his nose, making him look like a gangster.

  My own cap was made of close-fitting sheepskin with flaps that tied at the top and could be pulled down over my ears. The cap gave me a vaguely Russian look, which provided Stanley with a seemingly endless supply of names to call me, such as Willipov, Bromski, and the Montague Czar.

  It was amazing to me that he could find humor in my cap while failing to see the absurdity of the climbing jacket he had insisted on bringing along. It was of his own design and had been put together by a very expensive Jermyn Street tailor. The fabric was heavy woolen twill and fitted with a dozen pockets: on his hips, on his back, on his chest, on his arms, and even a little one on his wrist. When I asked him what this was for, he said he couldn’t remember. Then he added that whatever it was for, it had been a very good idea and as soon as he recalled its purpose, he would put it to use. As for the rest of the pockets, when he experimented by filling them with chocolate bars, goggles, penknives, spare carabiners, and so on, he found that he could barely move.

  Despite all of Stanley’s pockets, the leather envelope containing Carton’s poems remained safely tucked away in one of mine.

  Behind us, wheeled by two porters, came the coffin, now officially known as the Rocket. This procession drew a variety of stares, from astonishment to curiosity to scorn, none of which was unfamiliar to us after the past few weeks in London.

  Twenty minutes after arriving at the Gare du Nord, we were on the move again. We had booked first-class tickets for the entire journey. Stanley had insisted on our traveling in style, saying that if we were on our way to give his uncle a final resting place, we bloody well deserved a decent temporary resting place on our way there. With logic like that, it was not a point worth arguing.

  “I’m going back to check on the gear,” I said as soon as the train started rolling.

  “Please yourself,” replied Stanley. He was doing his best to read a French newspaper. “You ought to just relax a bit and enjoy the ride.”

  “I will,” I said, “but not right now.”

  “And for God’s sake stop patting your chest.”

  I had developed the habit of placing my right hand over the left side of my chest, to make sure that the leather envelope was still where it should be. “Well, you can look after the poems if you want.”

  “I think not,” he mumbled from behind the paper.

  I made my way back through the carriages, passing through first, then second, and finally third class. The farther I went, the louder things became, but also the more cheerful. In first class, waiters were passing from compartment to compartment, somberly announcing the meal that would be served in the dining car. In second class, sandwiches were being sold, along with half bottles of wine, from a counter at one end of the front carriage. In third class, the passengers had brought their own food in canvas-and-leather satchels. Blue-and-white-checked napkins were tucked into shirt necks, bone-handled knives carved slices off enormous salamis, baguettes were torn to pieces, and wine was drunk from old French army–issue two-spouted canteens.

  Beyond the various classes was the conductor’s wagon, divided between an office and his sleeping quarters. Past that came the freight wagon. It was here that Carton’s coffin had been stored, among gray sacks of mail marked PARIS VILLE, bicycles, and all our mountaineering gear.

  The door had been left open a few feet, as was normal, to keep the place aired out. After I had checked on the coffin, and everything else belonging to us, I sat down on the mail sacks and watched the French countryside clattering by. The wagon filled with the dusty smell of approaching rain.

  On the Rocket, I noticed how worn the runners had already become after several days of being dragged across the playing fields of St. Vernon’s while we tested the maneuverability of my invention. These experiments had made me hopeful that the Rocket would perform well on the ice and hard-packed snow of the glacier.

  From this uncomfortable seat, I glanced around at other pieces of our equipment, such as the long, orange-painted willow sticks, known as “wands,” for marking our path, the ropes, candle lamps for use inside the tent, and new gray leather-trimmed canvas packs I’d ordered from Bergans of Norway, which had arrived only one day before our departure. The sleeping bags, stove, water bottles, and ice axes had all been carefully selected and packed away.

  Besides the standard mountaineering gear, there was a crate of apples, which had been sent by my father from an orchard down the road from where he lived. Stanley and I knew we’d never be able to eat them all, but we thought we might as well bring them along.

  It was the type of gesture I would expect from my father. These pippins, green and rosy-cheeked, were the distillation of the rain and sun which fell upon the village where he lived. In his life of runner beans and roses, nothing was more precious. He knew that I would understand this, and knew perhaps as well that only I would understand it.

  Another piece of equipment I had brought along in order to serve our special needs was a winch. It was, in fact, the winch that the groundskeepers at St. Vernon’s had used to haul the line painter up onto a flatbed, which would then be towed back to the work shed by the school’s ancient Massey Ferguson tractor. In a previous life, the winch had been used for hauling a boat out of the water and onto a trailer. One handle on either side allowed the steel cable to be wound in, while a set of blunt metal teeth prevented the cable from being let out again. A switch could be thrown which would disengage the teeth and allow the cable to pay out, but while the teeth were engaged, the people winding in the cable could rest without letting the line slip. The only trick would be to find a suitable place for anchoring the winch while it was in use. I didn’t know if the winch could be used where we were going, but I knew it had to be better than hauling in ropes with our bare hands, trying to pull the coffin up the face of Carton’s Rock.

  I had thought of the winch too late to be able to shop around for a new one, so I’d gone to the groundskeeper’s hut and pleaded my case.

  The five of them, the head groundskeeper and his crew, spent their time in a large shed at the far end of the playing fields. There, as I had seen through the cracked and dusty windows, they had fashioned for themselves a comfortable cave decorated with old pieces of furniture scavenged from the well-appointed classrooms of the school. There were hammocks hangin
g from the walls, in which they took their frequent naps, and piles of old magazines which doubled as tables. They spoke a language of rough Cockney, filled with rhyming words which stood for other words so that they seemed to be speaking in crossword-puzzle clues, decipherable only by members of their own gruff tribe. Nothing went to waste in this kingdom. Even the dregs of their tea leaves were ploughed into the compost of their vegetable garden. There, raspberries grew beside cabbages, which grew beside the deep green shoots of leeks, which grew in turn beside the jagged leaves of mint. Guarding these plants were the carcasses of rabbits, pigeons, and even mice, caught in traps and now strung up on stakes and left to rot as a warning to others of their kind.

  I admired them from a distance, because it was only at a distance that they let themselves be known.

  Now they sat in frowning silence while I did a clumsy impersonation of Carton reenacting his climbs. I winched the imaginary coffin up the side of a cliff, wheeling my arms as if I were pedaling a bicycle with my hands, all the while describing how necessary the winch would be to our endeavor.

  When I finished, I stood panting before the men, feeling the silence swell in the room.

  The groundskeepers continued to stare at me, seemingly unaware that I had nothing left to say. Just as I was about to thank them for their time and leave, they exchanged a few cryptic glances among themselves. Then one of them sat forward. His name was Mr. Dooley. To judge from the repair work on his clothing, it would have been safe to say that he had never thrown anything away in his life. His once-blue overalls were a quilt of different fabrics, sporting everything from corduroy to leather to what appeared to be pieces of Persian carpet. These patches were the badges of his rank among the groundskeepers, and all of them seemed to have known in advance that Dooley would speak for them. “Are you going to bring it back?” he asked, his Irish accent clipping the words.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I might not be able to.”

  Dooley sat back and clicked his teeth around his well-chewed pipe stem.

  “If I don’t return it to you,” I said, “I’ll buy you a new one.”

  New glances were exchanged.

  “Perhaps they don’t make it anymore,” said Dooley.

  “Then you can choose whichever one you want.”

  More rapid eye movement.

  “Any one at all?” asked Dooley.

  I nodded. “I’ll make you that promise in writing.”

  For the first time, the focus of Dooley’s eyes changed. He removed the pipe from his mouth.

  I felt as if I must have said the wrong thing.

  “There’s nothing that needs to be in writing,” he said.

  “As you wish,” I replied.

  Dooley turned to the man next to him.

  This man’s name was Hector Partridge. He was tall and sinewy. His skin looked kippered by tobacco smoke. One of his front teeth was made of silver, and he sucked at it as if the silver nourished him somehow.

  “Hector,” said Dooley. “Give the man his winch.”

  As I carried the winch away with me, I looked at the school grounds and the tidy gray rooftops of the school buildings and I wondered suddenly whether I would return to St. Vernon’s when this journey was over.

  Now, greased and with new cable fitted, the winch lay on the floor of the baggage car, neatly stored inside a wooden box which had once held a case of our favorite Château Figeac. To offset its weight and the bulk of the coffin, I had arranged, through the Italian Society of Mountain Guides, for six porters and two guides to meet us at Palladino. From there, they would accompany us to the summit of Carton’s Rock.

  Once my mental inventory of our gear was complete, I fetched an apple from the crate, polished it on my chest, and took a bite. The taste reminded me of the days when I had ridden to and from the Alps in baggage cars like this. Using our rucksacks for pillows, we had eaten apples and chewed Horlicks tablets instead of buying food on the train, which we could not afford. We’d slouched on the jostling floor, feet all pointed towards the center, where sometimes a candle lamp would be left burning at night. I remembered the shine on the hobnails of our climbing boots and the smell of their waterproofing.

  When the weather was warm, we would slide back one of the doors and watch trees file past in a blur, our view obscured from time to time by wreaths of steam from the engine up ahead. Of all the views I had glimpsed through the doors of those wagons, one stood out more clearly than the rest. It was only a fragment, and I didn’t know why it came back to me more clearly than the others. I didn’t even remember when it had occurred, except that it was night and autumn was coming on, so we must have been heading north, back to England. The fields were deep in autumn mist, frozen blue in the light of a full moon. The candle in our lamp had burned out, and now the only light from inside the wagon came from the burning ends of cigarettes. Long lines of poplar trees stretched out like telegraph lines into the darkly merging sky and earth.

  Now those same poplar trees, their emerald-and-white leaves flickering in the heat, cast their shadows on the sunset fields of barley. The barley stalks changed color in the breeze, from scarab-beetle green to the green of palest jade. Heat haze rose from the fields, blurring the world into a lazily sketched landscape.

  From the crate sent by my father, I fished out some of the apples which were no longer any good and threw them out the open door. The green balls arced out into the sunlight, curving beautifully as the motion of the train left them behind.

  Here and there the shadows of old shell craters seemed to ride like waves across a field, and the moss-patched ruins of concrete bunkers tilted into the earth like ships sinking in that green ocean. Time was filling in the wounds, season by season, under the brittle confetti of leaves.

  I stayed there until the landscape had vanished in the purple shadows of twilight. Then I went back and joined Stanley, by which time it was so dark outside that it seemed as if the windows had been painted black.

  The train thundered on into the night, and at last sleep overtook me.

  THE NEXT MORNING, after changing trains in Geneva, we passed through Lausanne and went on towards the Grand St. Bernard Pass.

  At the sight of the Bernese and then the Pennine Alps, I felt a shudder in my chest. It was the trembling of energy stacked up inside me, ready for the long days ahead.

  Passing through the Val d’Entremont, the train clattered along beside the river Drance, so close to the overhanging slopes that even if we craned our necks we could not see the tops. On the other side of the river, the sharply sloping fields were sown with wildflowers—campion, monkshood, and goldenrod. Waterfalls and tiny streams which tumbled from the rocks above merged into fast-running, gray-silted rivers. These rivers roared beneath the railway bridges, spraying the windows and bending the sun into rainbows. As the ravines emerged from shadow, I found myself returning to the old habit of plotting an imaginary path along each stony slope to reach the glacier fields that lay beyond.

  Turning to look back inside the carriage, I could see others who had come to climb. Their eyes were focused on the world above, refusing to be overwhelmed by the vastness of the mountains. Instead, each crag and pinnacle of rock became a mental exercise in how it could be scaled.

  Others stared with rounder eyes at the quaintness of the pastures, at the overwhelming cleanliness of the houses. From time to time, their eyes passed over the barrenness of the scree slopes and the overhanging cliffs, then quickly returned to the lower ground, where flowers smudged the hedgerows with more cheerful colors than the monochrome world of rock and ice above.

  Stanley sat very still, hands balanced carefully in front of his face, fingertips touching, lost in thought.

  I knew what was going on inside his brain. Until now, the mountains had remained a distant prospect, more of a concept than a reality. At last the truth was sinking in. We were both wondering if, each now at the age of forty, we might have grown too old for what lay ahead. In the past, it had always
been a question of willpower and skill. But that was before Stanley’s knees began to ache in damp weather and before the vision in my right eye became flecked with gray if I didn’t get enough sleep.

  Stanley gazed at the mountains rising up on either side of the train as if they were the jaws of a vast creature which had reared up out of the earth. “Bastard,” he whispered.

  I knew without having to ask that he was not cursing me. He was cursing his uncle.

  Stanley turned to me suddenly. “These guides we’ll be hiring,” he said, giving voice to a conversation which had apparently been going on inside his head for some time already.

  “Six porters and two guides,” I said. “They’re meeting us in Palladino.”

  He nodded and went back to staring out the window.

  WE CROSSED THE BORDER into Italy and changed trains at Aosta. From there, we had to go all the way south to Turin before catching another train north to the town of Domodossola, at the entrance to the Antigorio Valley.

  There were no trains into the valley, so we spent the night in Domodossola and hired a cab early the next morning to take us the rest of the way.

  With all of our gear crammed inside, and the coffin tied up on the roof, the cab took us about thirty kilometers up the valley. We reached Formazza late in the early afternoon. From there, we continued on to Palladino, which already lay in the shadows of the mountains above. At the southern edge of town, Lake Vannino glimmered in the half-light.