Thin Air

by Michelle Paver

  Muttering, I drag on my windproofs and crawl outside. It’s just after three, overcast and bitingly cold.

  Pasang isn’t in his ice cave. He’s on the porters’ highway, already halfway up the defile. Bloody fool, he misunderstood my orders; he’s heading off to join Garrard and Kits today.

  ‘Pasang! Come back here!’

  He’s too far away to hear. Or he doesn’t want to hear.

  Stumbling back to the ice cave, I grab my field glasses. There he is, with his doko on his back, his bedroll and the post bag jutting from the top.

  The post bag? But that’s down here, I’ve just seen it.

  Slowly, I lower the glasses. The truth crashes over me. There is a post bag in my ice cave, but it doesn’t contain letters.

  The post bag is waiting for me when I crawl inside. Pulling off my mittens and my gloves, I fumble with Kits’ double knot and yank it open. There’s a ringing in my ears. I’m spiralling into darkness. Nothing will make me put my hand into the post bag. I don’t even want to look. Instead, I grasp it by the corners and upend it.

  And out on to the empty bunk, with a heavy, soft thud, falls Arthur Ward’s rucksack.

  17

  The rucksack slumps on the empty bunk, exhaling a musty smell of mould.

  Bloody hell, Nima, why didn’t you give it to Lobsang? Why didn’t you take it yourself?

  Grabbing the thing by its shoulder strap, I fling it outside, knocking over the Tilley lamp, which falls with a smash, spilling paraffin over the floor.

  The stuff-sack ‘door’ flaps in the wind, revealing a grey-green corner of rucksack. Its main flap is buckled, but I picture the drawstring mouth underneath.

  Seizing my ice-axe by the head, I push the thing away. Then I crawl outside and push it further, right over to the next cave. The safety loop on my axe handle snags on one of the buckles, so that when I pull the axe back, the rucksack comes too.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ I snarl, shoving it away.

  Suddenly, I see myself, a wild-eyed, shaggy-bearded tramp kneeling in the snow, fighting a rucksack. For Christ’s sake, Stephen, get a grip on yourself! It can’t hurt you. And it can’t attract anything. Nothing will come after it.

  Words. There’s a horrible inevitability about this. Me, the rucksack, and what haunts this mountain. All here at Camp Three.

  The clouds have gone, and the sky is a cold, crystalline blue. The glare is blinding. The wind is roaring over the Saddle, the prayer flags snapping on the Sherpas’ Altar. By my knee, there’s a scarlet spatter in the snow, where Pasang spat out a mouthful of pan. Pasang who is no longer here.

  I am alone at twenty-three thousand feet in this wilderness of ice. I cannot let myself go to pieces. One small mistake, and that will be the end.

  And, oh God, I’ve already made it. I forgot to put on my gloves. My fingers are waxy and numb.

  ‘No no no,’ I mutter as I crawl back inside. I can’t feel my feet, either. Fool that I was, I never took off my gaiters, they’re frozen on my calves. My crampons are still on too, and caked with snow. I imagine myself with no hands or feet, nothing but black, gangrenous, frostbitten stumps.

  What do I tackle first? Hands. Without them, I’m dead. Without my feet, I’m merely crippled.

  ‘That’s good,’ I say out loud. ‘That’s logical. Take it step by step.’

  After rummaging on my bunk, I find my gloves entangled in my sleeping bag and drag them on, then tuck my hands into my armpits. The warmth hurts, and that’s good too; they may only be frost-nipped.

  Now for the feet. My gloved fingers are so clumsy it takes an age to unlace my frozen gaiters and get my crampons off, then begin on my boots. All the time, I’m keeping a wary eye on the daylight ringing the cave mouth. Long past three. Only a couple of hours before it starts getting dark.

  The Tilley lamp is past repair; I’m going to need a light, and I can’t rely on my electric torch. Rummaging in the back, I’m overjoyed to find a packet of candles and a candle-lantern. My eyes sting. The old-fashioned mica casing reminds me of Aunt Ruth.

  When did I last eat or drink? I find a canister of brandy balls and tip some into the hot water on the Primus. They take ages to melt, and I tire of waiting. I scoop some of the brew into my mug, and greedily drink, then sit blinking, summoning the will to act.

  I’m still wearing one boot. It takes another age to remove it and peel off my socks. My feet are pallid and hard, and when I press my sole, the dent takes a while to fade.

  ‘Fool, fool,’ I whisper. I have to restore circulation, but my hands hurt too much to chafe my feet, so I improvise a hot-water bottle, knotting a length of oxygen tubing at one end and filling it with the rest of the sugar water. Then I pull on three pairs of socks and wrap the tubing around my feet, tying my muffler around that to keep it on. They’re already beginning to prickle, thank God.

  Encouraged, I crawl to the cave mouth and scoop more snow into the pot – deliberately not glancing at the rucksack – then I set the pan to melt, for porridge. I’m not hungry, I’m nauseated. That’s not a good sign.

  I need to take stock of myself. Come on, Stephen, you’re a doctor. So do some doctoring.

  Apart from incipient frostbite and nausea, I have the usual high-altitude cough, but I’m not frothing or bringing up blood, so no sign of oedema. The cut on my hand isn’t healing, and when I peer at my face in the saucepan lid, my warped reflection reveals a burst blood vessel in one eye, flooding the white an alarming scarlet. It doesn’t hurt, though; I don’t think it’s serious. What troubles me more is my indecision. That’s another symptom of mountain sickness. The question is, how bad?

  To check my mental acuity, I name aloud the bones in the human foot. Then the hand. Good, I think I got them all. By far the best test is to walk a line heel-to-toe without falling over; but that would mean undoing the hot-water tubing around my feet, and crawling outside.

  It would also give me a chance to check on the rucksack. And that’s not psychosis; anyone would do the same.

  The light around the cave mouth is turning grey. What? Ten past five already?

  I think of shadows creeping up the mountain. I think of the long, dark night ahead.

  I have to perform the heel-to-toe test. I have to be sure that I’m in my right mind. Painfully, I unwind the hot-water tubing, burying it under my sleeping bags to keep it warm, then drag on boots, mittens, balaclava, snow glasses, windproofs.

  The rucksack has fallen forwards on to its face.

  I say ‘fallen’ – and yet somehow, it contrived to fall into the wind. And the way in which it lies suggests – or would if I was mad enough to believe it – that it had been shuffling towards my cave. Or that it was pushed.

  With my axe handle, I shove the thing away till it’s right in front of Kits’ cave, a good four feet from mine. I’ve lost all interest in testing my co-ordination, but I have to; that’s why I came outside.

  To my relief, I manage a wobbly heel-to-toe line without falling over. ‘Not bad, Stephen. Not bad at all!’

  The sun is dipping behind the western peaks. Over my shoulder, I see Talung flush a dusky pink in the last of the light. I watch the pink cooling rapidly to mauve. A few seconds later, it fades to ash, and the brightness is gone.

  Above me, clouds are clawing their way down the ice cliff. Spindrift is stinging my face and shrouding the stockpile. I can’t see the crevasse beyond.

  Is that what it wants? For me to end up down there in the crevasse?

  When I turn to go back to the cave, the rucksack is gone.

  That can’t be. It was right there where I left it, in front of Kits’ cave.

  ‘Where the hell are you?’ I mutter, stumbling about in the snow. I have to find it; I can’t bear the thought of it lying in wait.

  I trip and fall. ‘Fuck!’ It was here all the time, hidden under the snow. Back on my feet, I kick it again and again. ‘How’d you like that, eh? Eh?’

  Why don’t I throw it away? Trudge over to the cre
vasse and chuck it in. Or better still, march straight ahead, past the Sherpas’ Altar, and fling it over the precipice. That’s an awful lot nearer, and four thousand feet down: there, try coming back from that.

  I can’t do it. The precipice is twenty yards off. I dare not stray so far from my cave. If these clouds closed in and I lost my bearings, I’d be finished.

  There’s nothing for it. Forget about the rucksack. You’ll just have to tough it out until the Sherpas get here in the morning.

  * * *

  I had a struggle opening the sack of sago, but I cobbled together some gritty, half-cooked porridge, and forced down a few mouthfuls. Shortly afterwards, I vomited; but most of it went on the floor, not my bunk.

  I’m feeling a bit steadier. My feet and hands hurt a good deal, so with luck they’ll pull through, and the cave is a balmy five degrees below. Also, I’ve melted more snow for tea. Well, a sort of tea-coloured brew that’s cloudy with leftover sago, and fortified with apricot brandy; I found a bottle at the back of the cave, and what the hell, I need it.

  Now and then, the ice around me creaks, or I hear the distant boom of an avalanche. But not even that, or the wind or the hiss of the Primus, can keep out the endless silence of the mountain.

  My breath sounds harsh in this cramped little tomb. I’m trying not to think about the millions of tons of ice on top of me. All it would take is one slight readjustment, and I’d be crushed.

  I find it impossible to grasp that I’m so utterly at the mercy of chance. Isn’t it strange that we laugh at the Sherpas for putting their faith in amulets, when we’re really exactly the same, except that with us it’s a white rabbit’s foot, or a crucifix? And like the Sherpas, we believe in this thing called ‘luck’. We say: ‘His luck ran out’, as if luck were a physical substance, rather than an illusion; it doesn’t exist.

  I know it’s an illusion, but I can’t bring myself to believe it. And I do feel better for having Nima’s white ribbon in my pocket. What next? A horseshoe nailed above the cave mouth, with its ends pointing upwards, to stop the luck trickling out? I should’ve brought one with me from that pony I rode down in Sikkim. What was his name?

  On second thoughts, I couldn’t have, because he wasn’t shod. But still, what was his name? I wish I could remember. I don’t like the idea that the mountain is rubbing away my memories, like the wind erasing footprints in the snow.

  When Kits and I were boys, we used to fight about who had the better memory. We fought about everything. ‘Stop bickering,’ Aunt Ruth would scold, but we never did. Kits would enrage me by insisting that I had to ‘respect my elders’ – meaning him – while I could always drive him wild simply by refusing to say goodnight after we’d climbed into bed.

  The one thing we didn’t fight about was that stuffed owl on the landing. By day, I was rather proud of it. After all, not every seven-year-old boy can boast a real barn owl in a glass case. But by night, I was scared rigid by its glaring eyes, its vicious talons and outstretched wings. Whenever I woke from a bad dream, and the only thing that would help was to snuggle into Nurse’s bed, that owl barred my way – because in order to reach Nurse, I had to cross the shadowy landing, and creep past that dreadful winged presence. I couldn’t manage it on my own, so I would shake Kits awake and beg him to take me, and he would sit up blearily: ‘Oh, not again!’

  I’ve cut a niche in the wall above my bunk for the candle-lantern, and blocked the ‘window’ at the back with tins and a shirt. I’m trying to summon the energy to wriggle into my sleeping bags.

  The cave smells of vomit and paraffin. I ought to clean it up. And if I happen to check on the rucksack while I’m at it, so what? I need to make sure that it’s where I left it, in front of Kits’ cave.

  Scraping up the frozen vomit with the saucepan lid, I loosen a corner of the door and fling the mess outside. To prove that I’m in control, I do this without glancing at the rucksack. Then, when I’m ready, I turn my head and look.

  It’s no longer outside Kits’ cave. It’s halfway towards mine, sitting upright and slightly askew, with its main flap unbuckled and flung back to reveal its puckered drawstring mouth.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ I mutter through clenched teeth. Savagely, I jab at the thing with my axe, and it flops backwards and lies there, with snow streaming over it.

  Suddenly, I’m ashamed. Ye gods, Stephen, what next? Drive a stake through its heart?

  * * *

  I must have moved the rucksack without knowing it. And I must have opened it, too. There is no other explanation. The bloody thing can’t have moved by itself.

  I wish I hadn’t thought of that. It conjures an image of it lurching blindly towards me at a slouching shuffle, its head lolling to one side.

  Did I open it? Is mountain sickness making me play tricks on myself? Like that time when I brought Garrard’s altimeter into my tent without realising?

  There’s only one way to find out. Before I turn in, I shall burn the cork from the brandy bottle and blacken my hands with soot. If, at dawn, I find the rucksack smeared with soot, I shall know that I did it in my sleep.

  * * *

  I’m pleased with that idea of the burnt cork. It’s an empirical test that proves I’m still thinking rationally.

  Before I put it into practice, though, I’ve some housekeeping to do. The dead skin on my fingertips is already blackening, so I pare it off with my penknife, then smear the oozing pink flesh with calamine; not forgetting that cut on my left hand. After that, I draw on my gloves, to keep the wounds clean.

  By the time I’ve finished, my hands are throbbing viciously. But I welcome the pain. It means my flesh is still alive.

  ‘Not doing too badly, Stephen old boy,’ I mumble. My voice is loud in the stillness. The Primus is off – although I’ve no memory of having done that – and the candle-lantern glimmers in its niche near my head, its flame twisting in the cold breath from the void beyond the ‘window’.

  Belatedly, I remember my improvised ‘hot-water bottle’, and bind the tubing around my feet, securing it with my muffler, as before. The cave is a mess, so I tidy it up, laying out my bedding and neatening the supplies on the empty bunk.

  Beneath the burst sack of sago, I find my bundle of letters. I stare at it, swallowing hard. The world still exists. The safe world of London and omnibuses.

  My post turns out to be two fat letters from Cousin Philippa, a narrow, ominous envelope from Clare’s father (that goes to the bottom of the pile), and a slender brown paper package addressed in a spidery black hand I’ve never seen before.

  Dear God. The return address on the back is C. F. Tennant, Juniper Cottage, near Rungneet, Darjeeling.

  The package contains several typewritten sheets, and a handwritten letter dated April 23rd: two weeks after we left Darjeeling.

  I remember him hunched in his Bath chair like a battered old eagle. I remember his flinty eyes glaring up at me. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms. What does he want?

  Dear Dr Pearce, he writes. You left my house under a cloud not of your making.

  Well that’s true, although surprising that he admits it.

  You asked a question which brought on what my daughter calls ‘a turn’. I’ve since realised that your query was entirely innocent. You asked me ‘what sound it made’, and by that, of course, you meant the kangling, the thigh-bone trumpet on my desk. You couldn’t have known that what you said was an all too vivid reminder of something that took place on the expedition in ’06 and which has haunted me ever since.

  ‘Haunted’, that’s rich. I could tell him a thing or two about ‘haunted’.

  All this is a prolix way of saying that I ought not to have sent you off with a flea in your ear; nor should I have issued that rather melodramatic interdiction against attempting the south-west face. Why did I do that? I wonder. Was I trying to prevent you from repeating our mistakes? Or was I trying to goad you into making the attempt, because I regarded your expedition as my last chance? Perhaps
the latter, for at the time, I cherished a hope that you might find Ward’s body and lay him to rest.

  Lay him to rest … What does he mean? Does he know? Did he send us here knowing what was waiting?

  The ink in the next sentence is darker, as if Tennant had paused before continuing. Had he stopped to consider how much to tell me? Or did he simply need to re-fill his fountain pen?

  To continue. You will recall that at one point in our talk, I asked you to hand me a box from my desk. I intended to give you what it contained, namely the memoir I am sending you now; but shortly thereafter, you posed your ill-fated question and the chance was lost.

  So there we are. I don’t know when, or even if, the enclosed will reach you and you must make of it what you will. I wrote it earlier this year, to set the record straight about what happened on the mountain in 1906. In other words, to tell the truth about Arthur Ward.

  18

  A gust of wind sucks the door in and out, making me jump.

  The truth about Arthur Ward. The words stare up at me from the page.

  The lying, cowardly old bastard. Why did he wait all this time to send it? Why not when we were still in Darjeeling, or in the foothills? And why me? Why must I shoulder the burden, simply because I happened to blunder into his study?

  Angrily, I toss the papers on the empty bunk. I have to get warm and ready for bed, that’s the priority. I will not risk frostbite for Charles bloody Tennant.

  First, I place spare candles in the lantern niche; more on the empty bunk, and my match-tin in my trouser pocket. Bottle of apricot brandy on the floor, ready for the burnt cork exercise; windproofs spread on my bunk, as insulation. Then, pulling on my extra sweater and bunching up another to form a pillow, I manoeuvre myself into my sleeping bags. The whole business is even more protracted than usual because of my gloved hands and the hot-water tubing around my feet, but at last I’m ready, lying on my stomach with the half-read letter and Charles Tennant’s ‘memoir’ before me.