Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  Josef pushed him away.

  “Go down while you still can.”

  “No,” came the refusal.

  Lifting his axe by the head with his right hand, Josef pushed at the Sherpa with the spiked end.

  “Go away. It’s over.”

  The Sherpa easily pushed the axe’s shaft away with a hand and stared at Josef, speechless.

  “It’s all right, my friend. You must go. Someone has to tell of what we have done. I’ll rest here.”

  The Sherpa hesitated.

  “Go, please.”

  Ang Noru leaned forward to briefly touch his forehead to the side of Josef’s head. As he did so, Josef heard him say only one word.

  The Sherpa turned and left the small cave. Alone now, Josef tried to recall what the Sherpa had said but couldn’t. It had gone with him. He remembered instead, for a moment, that there was something more that he should have given him, to take down, but that thought also dissolved, still incomplete.

  He laid his ice axe down alongside his body. Its small flag was missing. It must have been torn away in the fall.

  As he leaned once more against the cold stone of the cave, riding new waves of pain from his leg, he imagined that little flag caught by the wind, twisting and spiraling as it was blown away from the mountain. He flew with it into the air, back over the hills, over Tibet, Sikkim, India, the oceans, until they arrived at other hills, softer and greener. He wondered if Magda could see them as they flew.

  I’m sorry.

  A sudden fit of bloody coughing dragged Josef back down into the dark of the small cave. The walls around him closed in. He thought that the English army officer was actually there now, talking to him as he had for those hours before Ang Noru returned without the Tibetan. His final words to Josef filled the cave. “No man has the right to deny the destiny of another, whatever his masters might command. True honor is much more than blind loyalty. Good luck.”

  He must have fallen unconscious for a while. When Josef came to, he couldn’t feel his broken leg anymore, only an intense heat burning inside his chest, violent like sodium reacting to water. Compelled to put out the fire, he forced the neck of his jacket open, pulling at the silk kata scarf within. He tugged the scarf away with his left hand and held it tight in his mittened fingers. He pulled it up to his face and held it over his eyes, catching a glimpse once more of the old abbot placing it over his neck before he set off, hearing again the mumble of his blessings, understanding again what he wanted him to do, acknowledging again that it was what he knew he should do all along.

  A great weight bore down on him. It pushed his head forward, down into the opening of his jacket.

  Josef felt his chin touch the top of the camera still hung around his neck.

  He recalled what it was that he should have given Ang Noru.

  It was too late now.

  Tilting his head back up, he stared out at the faint white blur that was all that was now left of his world beyond the cave.

  What was it the Sherpa had said?

  Josef mouthed the word as he closed his eyes one last time.

  “Summit.”

  96

  The British Embassy, Kathmandu, Nepal

  June 4, 2010

  3:30 p.m.

  Henrietta was walking with Quinn down a basement corridor followed by Emmerich and Dawa. “The tests are back on the Tate oxygen cylinder, Neil,” she said to Quinn as she looked from side to side, searching for a particular door.

  “And?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid. I was expecting that they were going to tell me that it was porous but evidently the cylinder was not defective.”

  “Crap. So I’m not off the hook?”

  “Well, not because of faulty oxygen, no. However, the syringe proved to be much more interesting.”

  “How so?”

  “It was labeled as corticosteroid but actually it contained traces of a concentrated solution of street-grade methamphetamine laced with cocaine. It seems it was something cobbled together by Sarron and the Vishnevskys to jump a client back onto their feet so that they could pull them down off the hill and sort them out at a lower level. It might even work for an adult, at the risk of a major heart attack. However, for a young man like Nelson Tate Junior it would have quickly proved fatal. As soon as Sarron heard that you had used his HA medical kit to inject the boy he would have understood what had happened. Attack was the man’s only method of defense.”

  Quinn could say only, “Jesus,” shaking his head and walking on until Henrietta, having found her doorway, motioned him to stop and wait for the other two to join them.

  When they were all together, she said, “You do understand that we will never be able to talk about what we might see in here. Evidently the film in Josef Becker’s camera was in very poor shape, hardly surprising when you consider what it went through. However, when I spoke to the specialist earlier, he did think he would be able to salvage something. We are going to sneak a quick look at it, then I will be making a final report to the British and German ambassadors and handing everything over for good.”

  The three nodded.

  “I know that I am already going a bit far managing the development process in this way, but I think when all is said and done, we have each earned the right to see what really happened up there in 1939. It may well be the most bittersweet moment of my long career, but a summit is a summit, and the truth is the truth. Now is not the moment to shy away from the habits of a lifetime, whatever my fears at what will be revealed. At the end of the day, if Josef Becker made it then I must respect that, even if I condemn his politics.”

  Henrietta Richards knocked on the closed door before them.

  From within, a delayed, “Come in,” granted them access. They each filed through the door, pushing aside a black cotton sheet hung to mask the cracks. A filtered crimson light illuminated the windowless room with a visceral glow. The smell of chemicals was toxic: instantly overpowering everyone except the white-coated man already working inside. After a lifetime spent in such environments, the Leica technician no longer even noticed it. Finishing another sequence of adjustments to the skeleton of an archaic negative enlarger, he flicked his head from side to side in silent appeal for more elbow room, mumbling something only to himself. He clearly preferred to work alone.

  The man made one further minute calibration then paused, arms dropping to his sides, eyes closing as he mentally counted down some required delay known only to his experience. The instant it was over, he quickly reached for the eight-by-ten-inch rectangle of photographic paper set within the base of the metal frame. Taking a corner of the white card in the long jaws of a pair of tongs, he then deliberately slowed himself to gently slide it into the first of four stainless steel trays of developing fluids he had so fastidiously prepared. He began to bathe the blank paper, lightly agitating it within the clear chemical bath, his soft, rhythmic movements setting the fluids lapping.

  A dark smudge dirtied the white rectangle’s center. Lines and shadows started to define themselves, growing in twists and turns like an aggressive black vine. The technician, completely and utterly absorbed in his task, carefully tweezered the sharpening image through the next three trays. With each transfer he leaned a little further forward, deliberately hiding it, still, at heart, the small, clever boy at the prestigious Karlsruhe Academy who would shield his impeccable schoolwork from the prying eyes of bigger, slower classmates.

  The observers in the room tried to arch around him in response, each desperate for their own first look, but the diminutive man expertly blocked their every move. He didn’t care who they were; he had a job to do. Only when he was completely satisfied with what he saw did he finally push back to lift the fully developed photograph from the last tray. Reaching up, he clipped it, with two small clothes pegs, onto the makeshift drying line strung in anticipation of that very mom
ent.

  The still-wet photograph hung above them all, soft like lychee flesh, swaying a little on the sickly air. No one in the darkroom said a word. They just stared up at it rigidly, as if brought to attention in unison.

  The image was black and white, yet to its small audience it shone down through the blood-red haze with all the colors of the rainbow. It showed a mountaineer standing just a couple of steps below the pointed white apex of a mountaintop. The cloudless sky behind was almost black, yet the figure at the center seemed to faintly glow as if surrounded by an evanescence of a whiter, brighter light.

  The baggy hood of the climber’s white canvas wind-jacket was thrown back. A pair of round-framed snow goggles were pushed up onto the ice-encrusted front of a fabric-peaked cap. Beneath, a woolen scarf wrapped the climber’s head, but it had been pulled down from the mouth to deliberately expose an exhausted yet triumphant face.

  The figure’s right arm was projecting forward and upward into the sky, its mittened hand gripping the bottom of a long, wood-shafted ice axe in a straight-armed salute. The T-shaped head of the axe was high above, hooking onto the very edge of the atmosphere. Below the axe’s long pick was a small flag. At the very moment the photographer had released the camera’s shutter, the wind must have gusted. In that fortuitous millisecond, the flag was perfectly unfurled, snapped back by the wind, its design unmistakable.

  They all recognized it immediately. Neil Quinn smiled as he looked up at the rudimentary flag’s ripped square of white cloth and the thick, hand-painted black lines of the Star of David it so clearly displayed. His lips moved slightly as he silently mouthed the two words written beneath the Jewish symbol:

  FÜR ILSA

  “Neil, I think we need to take a little trip together,” he heard Henrietta whisper as they continued to look up at the photograph.

  Epilogue

  The Von Trier Institute, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

  June 9, 2010

  9:00 a.m. (India Standard Time)

  Henrietta and Neil entered the small, white room. The window was open to let in the cool of the early morning. It brought with it the smell of jacaranda and the sounds of children playing.

  The lady within was tiny, visibly older than her years, skin darkened and wrinkled by the relentless sun of the region. She sat in a wicker chair, a sheet covering her legs, her hands folded underneath. She looked up at her visitors with an alert curiosity.

  “So you have come all this way to talk about my father?”

  “Yes,” said Henrietta.

  “But he died in the mountains long ago.”

  “Did he or did he really end his days here with you in Hyderabad?” Henrietta asked, slightly too hastily—overeager in her desire to get to the truth.

  The birdlike woman just smiled at the quick fire question, if a little grimly, and then, shaking her head slowly, replied, “No, he died in the Alps in 1938. He was killed by the SS.”

  Henrietta paused this time before saying, as kindly as she was able, “But isn’t that the official version? With the greatest of respect, wasn’t the reality somewhat different?”

  “No.”

  “But you are Ilsa von Trier, Magda von Trier’s daughter?”

  “I am.”

  “So wasn’t Josef Becker your father? Didn’t your parents meet on the SS Gneisenau when they both came to India in the spring of 1939?”

  “No, but like my adoptive mother I did meet Josef. He was a kind man. He saved my life on the Paznaun when my family was trying to escape from Austria into Switzerland. He pushed me into a stone altar when the Germans surrounded the chapel where we were resting. I crawled out through a drain hole in the wall and jumped down the hill into the snow just like some goats I had seen on the way up. I disturbed the mules we had with us and the SS started shooting, but I fell so fast and so far they couldn’t catch me.

  “My mother told me how Josef thought I had been killed with the rest of my family

  on that ridge. I probably should have died up there but I kept going down that hill until I was found by a shepherd. Thinking that soldiers might be looking for me because of my family, I lied to him that my name was Ilsa Becker. You see, just before the SS came, I had asked Josef his name, and, even though he wasn’t meant to, he told me. I think he did it because he was trying so hard to cheer me up and get me over that terrible mountain.”

  She stopped talking for a moment, her face freezing as she thought about something still painful to her.

  “For years after, I truly believed that by asking I had, in some way, caused what then happened to everyone. Even so, I stuck with my lie, that name, the name of the person who had saved my life. It was a shield to hide behind, a reminder that I must never let my guard down, but also it spoke to me of the kindness of that particular German. It said that not all of them were evil.

  “I took a long time to recover from that night without end. The shepherd and his wife thought at first that I was going to die from being so exposed to the cold. I lost all my fingers on this hand because of frostbite.”

  From under the sheet, she pulled out her maimed and scarred right hand as if in proof of her story.

  “Josef had taken off my wet glove to warm it with his dry hands just before ...” Her voice breaking under the weight of her words, Ilsa paused, swallowed, and then, visibly steeling herself, continued. “I’m sorry, but moments like those never leave you. That shepherd and his wife looked after me for most of the war as one of their own. But then they were robbed and killed by a renegade band of army deserters in 1944 and I had to run for my life a second time. After that I was passed between a lot of people to stay free.”

  “So how did you come here?” Neil asked.

  “In the chaos after the war ended, Magda tried to find Josef’s family—his mother and sisters—searching high and low through the mountain communities and displaced persons camps of Bavaria. But it was all in vain; the Nazis had killed them in Ravensbrück despite the fact that Josef did what they wanted him to do. The SS were despicable. They even sent an agent here to Hyderabad to kill Magda, but her father was too clever for them. After the boat journey he knew she was in danger and sent her to work in the small villages helping people, so that she couldn’t be found. She never stopped that work once she heard what had happened to Josef. Their betrayal of his courage and honor sickened her to her dying day.”

  “But how did she know he climbed the mountain?”

  “The Sherpa Ang Noru.”

  Henrietta and Quinn looked at each other in recognition of that fact, both also silently acknowledging that it had been Josef Becker all along in that icy cave on the Second Step.

  “Ang Noru made it down from Everest,” Ilsa von Trier continued, “and then eventually here, thanks to a letter and a photograph of Magda that Josef gave him to deliver if he survived the climb. He was an incredibly strong and loyal man, as devoted to the memory of Josef as Magda was. He worked here until he died in August of 1964. He helped me a lot. Ang Noru understood suffering and he understood frostbite.”

  “When did you come here?”

  “In 1946. Josef had told Magda all about me and my family on the boat. She noticed my false name, Ilsa Becker, on the roster of the Landsberg DP Camp, when she was searching for his family. Curious, she asked to meet me and soon worked out that I was actually Ilsa Rosenberg. She proved how she knew who I was by showing me some photos of Josef she was using in the search for his relations. Soon after she arranged for me to travel to India. I took her name, and we lived as mother and daughter.”

  Ilsa rang a small bell and an Indian orderly came into the room. “Yes, Miss von Trier?”

  “Nerula, can you bring my mother’s scrapbook from my bedroom table?”

  They waited quietly until the man returned with what had once been an expensive photograph album. Its dark blue leather covers were old and battered, sca
rcely able to contain the bulging mass of press cuttings, letters, and photographs that crammed the huge volume. Wary of its weight, the orderly positioned it gently on the sheet that covered Ilsa von Trier’s lap.

  “There are some pictures in here of my mother and Josef on the boat to India.”

  Opening the album, she revealed some pages of small black-and-white pictures of a sea voyage. Most were views from the ship, but a few showed Magda on deck, others were of her parents. Magda von Trier was beautiful in the photographs, young and happy. There was only one of Josef. It was a close-up of his face in which he seemed to be laughing uncontrollably at something, the shine of tears showing on his creased cheeks.

  As Ilsa turned the pages onward with her good hand, Neil noticed that she was wearing a silver ring with the relief of an edelweiss flower. Seeing him look at it, Ilsa stopped at a page on which was glued a single, very creased and tattered photograph of Magda and a handwritten letter.

  “This is the photograph and the letter that led Ang Noru to Hyderabad. Josef Becker gave the ring you were looking at to my mother on the steamship. She wore it for the rest of her life, as I will too.”

  “Am I right in thinking you said Magda showed you more than one photograph of Josef Becker when she found you? Can I see the others?” Henrietta asked.

  “Yes, here are some more.”

  Ilsa turned the page again, which to Neil’s and Henrietta’s delight, revealed shots of either Ang Noru or Josef in and around the Rongbuk Monastery with Everest itself in the background.

  The pictures of Ang Noru were very sharp, clearly showing the Sherpa’s strong, proud face, but the first ones of Josef were poorly taken. They dramatically improved, however, as Ilsa leafed further through the album until coming to a page that was completely empty of any images. After it, the photographs immediately recommenced, showing Magda and the work she did, many of them with a young Ilsa at her side.

  Returning to the blank page, Ilsa tapped it three times with her damaged hand.