Mysterium

by Susan Froderberg

  “God, you made it,” Wilder says, gasping for air, still weak from the night’s ordeal.

  “Never so cold,” Devin says, his frozen lips barely moving.

  “Get up, man. You look pathetic.” Wilder offers a hand.

  “Yeah, you too.”

  Wilder’s laugh is like broken glass. “Twenty-two thousand feet is supposed to be cold.”

  Inside the tent Wilder primes the stove, puts a match to the gas. The flame erupts in a welcoming whoosh of reception. “We rest tonight,” Wilder says. “Start out early tomorrow.”

  “Know what I realized at some ridiculous point today?”

  “What’s it you realized?”

  “I came here to impress my father by making the summit.”

  “No, man, you came here to be with Sara.”

  “But I still want to prove to my father I can get to the top,” Devin says. “No, not prove to him. Beat him. I want to beat him to the summit.”

  “So what? Old story. You should want to beat him. Here, drink.” He fills Devin’s cup.

  Devin swallows the tea down.

  “I have nothing left here to eat,” Wilder says.

  “Look in my pack.”

  “Where at?”

  “Deep in the bottom there.”

  Devin leans back, watching his friend rummaging through the backpack. “Ever fall into a crevasse, man?” he says.

  * * *

  PASANG IS roaring in horror even before Reddy has inserted the pliers and vised the molar, but when the doctor gives a hard yank the Sherpa’s cries are extracted as fast and final as the tooth is. Vida holds the cup out, and Reddy releases the pincer’s grip, the lump of blackened enamel and pulp dropping into the tin with a dull clunk. He pushes a wad of gauze into the Sherpa’s mouth. “Bite down,” Reddy says. “Keep biting down.”

  Pasang holds on to his cheek, looks at the doctor suspiciously.

  “And do not be sprinkling any more holy rice about,” Reddy says. “You are instead to take these pills as directed, and please be done with all the other hooey and such.” He hands Pasang two midnight-blue capsules. Now the Sherpa smiles, knowing there is commerce in the palm of his hand.

  * * *

  ADAMS SITS in the mess tent drinking black tea, writing a letter to his wife. Likely there will be no mail carried down before the expedition leaves, as the few porters remaining are needed for the final haul out. So he will deliver the missive by hand, his testimony meaning no less.

  Friday, August 15, 1981

  The Sanctuary

  My Dearest Hillary,

  After 48 horrible hours a severe monsoon storm has finally ceased, and I have since recovered from a most serious case of cerebral edema. Fortunately, my dear, you were not here to worry about me nor see me in the asinine state I was in. Never have I felt more thwarted at having a word in mind, only then to find myself completely unable to bring it forth and release the word from my lips. What a slathering fool I must have appeared. What a fool I had become! I was fed and dressed and cared for like a child. I was hauled about like a load of cargo. I had wits enough to sense the humiliation of my condition, though I was too helpless to do much of anything about it. On the descent my mind and body came to, as it were, though we were by then in the throes of a blizzard, the mountain doing her utmost to shrug all of us off her slopes. Alas, we each endured and shall go on without further ado.

  Now at Base Camp I am settled in and breathing voluptuously saturated air that seems teeming with oxygen compared to the heights of the upper camps. My mind is sharp again, my body in tune, and I am truly grateful to be alive and can think only of renewing my fidelity with you, my dearest Hillary. My friend Hilman once claimed the reward of returning from a dangerous climb was the acute awareness of the privilege one had at being allowed to live. Surely, the man was right. Never again should I wander away without you by my side, or shall I say, let you wander away from mine.

  There is no need, nor any desire left in me, to stand once again at the summit. What has led me to the realization so late in this game, I intend to soon commit to paper: more of that and later. In any case, my plan now is to abide at Base Camp with Mingma Sherpa and several remaining porters until other party members have achieved their goal of the summit and are returned. Doctor Reddy and Pasang Sherpa have just an hour ago left for Advanced Camp, where they intend to join Professor Troy and Karma Sherpa. From there they make their way up the mountain to join the others: Sara Troy, Devin Reddy, and Wilder Carson, the three now camped at over 21,000 feet and moving higher. Mrs. Carson remains here at Base Camp with Mingma and myself.

  The sky is back to a beautiful high-altitude blue, and Mount Sarasvati, as if ashamed of her wayward ways these past days, sits hidden in a delicate mist. May she henceforth comport herself and remain benevolently subdued.

  Until soon, my darling, when you shall be once again in my arms!

  Your devoted and most uxorious husband,

  Ad

  * * *

  WHEN REDDY and Pasang arrive to Advanced they find the camp silent and deserted, the shelters sagged by bent poles and slacked by guylines, tent flaps zipped shut. The fire is cold, the radio without batteries. They spot a note tacked with a skyhook to a food crate: Left for Camp I. Bring up more rope along with provisions—S.T.

  Reddy and Pasang search through cartons and barrels, finding no coils or lines of any length or width. They inspect the entire camp, but still nothing.

  “No rope, Sahib.”

  “What do you mean, no hope?”

  “No, Sahib. I say no rope. No rope.”

  Reddy looks at him.

  The next morning the two shoulder their carries and start the hump to Camp I, the sky like frosted glass. They are thick with clothing and fully armored, their faces greased and masked, heads hooded and capped, eyes goggled and wide. They move through the phantasmal three-dimensional terrain like alien explorers on a distant planet. Their loads are heavy, the steep exhausting. They chuff and gasp for breath, lungs sucking at the paltry air, cold suffusing through their boots. They stop to drink but move on quickly before their sweat begins to freeze. The water in their guts swings and slushes about as in buckets. The frozen river of ice below their feet groans and creaks.

  They cache their loads at the roping-up place, gathering rations enough and gear enough for the next several days, repacking their backpacks, clipping into the fixed line to begin their ascent up the steep rib. Reddy takes the lead, and one at a time they jumar up the first pitch. They make the traverse past the rampart of daggered ice, and from here move up and over to the next stretch of vertical. Pasang fixes his stance and waits for the sahib to gain the rim of the crest. Reddy dusts the fresh snow off each hold as he moves along, sending down frosty palls so that Pasang must lower his head to shield his eyes. Reddy reaches up and grabs hold of a large rock, using it for support to haul himself up, when the bowling-ball-size boulder waggles loose. Reddy tries to push it back into the wall, but the rock is heavy and flexes his hand back and tweens free in release. He calls out but the Sherpa looks up just at the moment he should not, and any reaction at all is too late now as the boulder thwacks the man in the chest with a force that knocks the wind out of him completely, throwing him off his feet and straight off the cliff of Adams’ Rib. Reddy looks down, sees Pasang hanging twirled at the end of the rope like bait dangling at the end of a line, swinging out into an ocean of space. The Sherpa rights himself and climbs back up the rope, skating and falling, hanging suspended again, then another attempt only to skate and fall and sway, until finally he gets a decent grip and scrabbles his way back up the slippery ice, his life all the while reliant on a tiny ice screw twisted into the skin of a mountain too easily piqued.

  When the two are up and over the verge at the top of the rib they find Camp I empty and soundless as a grave. Sara and Troy have gone up the mountain, and Karma has left to descend back to base. But Reddy locates a radio with working batteries inside the otherwise empty t
ent.

  Pasang, bruised and sore, says he will go on no farther. “I am finish,” he says. “We have make mountain angry.”

  “Do not be foolish, Pasang. A mountain has no feelings of any kind.”

  “There has been jiggy-jiggy for not-married in Sanctuary.”

  “What do you mean jiggy-jiggy?” Reddy says.

  The Sherpa makes a circle with thumb and finger, thrusting a finger of the other hand in and out of the hole. “You and the Memsahib Missus.”

  “Stop that with your hands.”

  “I stay here,” he says. Pasang crosses his arms over his chest and looks out toward the Sanctuary. He shakes his head. “You allow no more holy rice. You allow no I am sorry to Sarasvati.”

  Reddy lifts his arms, lets them slap to his sides. “I give up.”

  “I go home,” Pasang says.

  “Tomorrow very early we go down to the base of the rib and bring up more loads from the cache,” Reddy says. “Stay here if you wish. Go back if you wish. But I will be moving on.” He shucks his boots off and climbs into the tent. “The gods,” he says. He heaves a breath.

  * * *

  SARA FOLLOWED her father in a balancing act along the ridge, the two umbilicaled to the rope with carabiners, their angular shadows pitched off over the brink of the slope. Troy hacked out tread with his ice axe, and she lengthened her stride to fit the cuts. They walked uplifted with a slight bend in the knees to steady the weight of their shouldered cargo, eyes fixed on each footfall ahead, any fear veered toward the augment of target and heed. Ice axes were leashed to their wrists. Their crampons chewed at the snow.

  They breathed and stepped and breathed and stepped, sliding their snap links along the static line. After nearly a mile they came to the rib’s terminus, and here they unclipped from the rope and with a leap each launched off the farthermost tip and clambered out onto a high lobe of glacial plateau. They stood amid a throng of tall columns of hoodoo-shaped ice, where deep blue ravines beneath ran akin to the pinnacled ridge. Tendons and swells were embellished and hollowed into snow, and all the sharp edges of the milky landscape were filed away to female by downfall and wind. Mysterium glimmered like a mirror above, capturing every image cast upon her, yet offering no semblance or facade, no persona or clone, no similitude or guise in requite or give otherwise. The only smell was the smell of the cold.

  Sara took a mitten off and held a hand out to take the water bottle from her father, the light glowing through the translucent flesh of her fingers. Her gums showed pink when she smiled. Her nose dripped in the chill. They passed the bottle back and forth and drank, drank until the water was gone and their bellies were swelled. Troy took the camera out of his backpack, and detached it from the leather casing. He stood and looked about, casting his glance far and wide. The sky was a jeweled blue, and wispy cirrus halo’d the sun in a parry of light waves and prism. Light ricocheted sparks off the slope.

  “Incredible,” he said. “Just incredible. In all my years of climbing, I have seen nothing like this. So savage and superb the mountain is.” He turned to face Sara, and she saw herself framed by Mysterium in the mirrored lenses of her father’s glacier glasses.

  “I feel I belong here,” she said. Her voice cracked with sentiment.

  “Hypoxic raptures,” her father said. “Buck up a bit. But hold that smile,” he said. With a click he shuttered the instant in.

  What she feels she does not say. She does not say that the mountain is her true and rightful place, just as she does not say that the mountain has title to her as well. The possessed and the possessor, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object; are they not but counterpoint, mirrored images of equal value and force, at one level, one and the same? So her father would say if he had spoken the thoughts he had taught her.

  Sweat began to freeze into the weave of their underclothing, and goosebumps erupted across their flesh like a sting of pelleting ice. Troy packed up camera and water bottle and strapped himself back into his backpack. They were turned to head up the incline when they heard the loud fracture. They planted their axes and looked back to see a windslab big as a warehouse break from the slope in a lusty pneumatic whump. They watched it slide off into the steep gully below, shivering with laughter as the spectacle unfolded, feeling hysterically joyful, favored and out of danger.

  They continued up the high skyline rise, drifts of wind trimming away thin layers of snow from the earth like peeling skin. The icy water of melt channels surged beneath their feet the way blood runs through veins, and strands of waving ice dust blew off from the summit. The universal beauty, the wise silence, the mountain Mysterium, all this Sara took in as the simulacrum of her mother. The mountain was her mother’s calmness, her stillness, her fortitude. The skyline ridge was the shape and texture of her mother’s shoulder, a shoulder Sara had so often rested her head on. Sweeps of avalanche that ruptured from the cliffs were like instances of her mother’s temperament, the tremble and rumble of them like her belly laugh, and all the surrounding whiteness held the goodness and certainty of her mother’s intent.

  Mother.

  Amanda.

  Mysterium.

  Time past rests in memory.

  Memory rests in flesh.

  Flesh rests in earth.

  Mysterium.

  Sarasvati.

  Bestowed this name, bestowed this mountain, bestowed this life. “Mother,” she said. The wind voiced aeolian, in aria, in hymn.

  Through me the way to the top of the mountain.

  Through me the way to an infinite paradise.

  Through me the way to the eternal One.

  “Father,” she said.

  Sara again saw herself framed in the mirrors of Troy’s glacier glasses. She had never felt more complete, never happier than now. Nearly twenty years ago, a mountain had taken the breath of her mother away, had broken her bones, ruptured her lungs and her heart, soaked up her blood. And now a mountain poured forth a milky snowiness and breathed her mother back again, the wind bursting from ribs and rolling off shoulders, the wind intoning in song. Did her father feel this too?

  Troy let his daughter take the lead as they moved up toward the scarp to Camp II, their footprints necklacing the slope like a string of pearls in their wake. They made their way through a chaos of seracs, and then on into a maze of ledges that zigzagged up the mountain, the snow glittering like tinsel in the sun. Little snowspouts gusted up around them, dervishing off into the blue. An outburst of current stirred up a whopping bolus of white powder, and in an instant Sara was lost completely within it as if effaced from the earth. Troy looked at the nothingness ahead of him, standing fixed into position, jaw hung loose with sucked-in breath, stunned in wonderment, waiting for his body to cue the next move. He took his glacier glasses off but the glare of the sun pierced like an ice pick, and he had to put them back on before he was blinded. He stood reeling within the incomprehensible, trying to right his sight, ready to cry his daughter’s name out, afraid to look down into the depths for what he might see. God, how can this be? She was gone. His breath caught, all his body suddenly numbed. And then in the dazzling luminosity she appeared. She was covered completely in a glint of white crystals, her shimmering backpack pinioned up high behind her shoulders, her smile radiant as all the light that ever was and all the light that could ever be. He gazed at his daughter in wonder, aware of the miracle of her existence, aware of the miracle of his. Oh, how we live in the flicker.

  “Father,” she said. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just the heights. The altitude playing its tricks.”

  He followed her on through a wintry desertscape, a corrugated sweep of sastrugi, and up they moved onto a snowfield shellac’d and meringue’d with flanks snow-cupped and duned. When the path became too deep Troy took over leading again, breaking new trails through a steepening ramp of waist-deep sugary cumulate. After hours of laborious swimming and kicking, nearly suffocated in altitude and sun, they rea
ched the top of the east ridge and arrived to Camp II, where here they would need to rest and eat and hope to sleep a most delicious sleep, continuing on into the magic that would be there for them the next day.

  * * *

  STILL, WE do not act recklessly, as fear is intrinsic in the will to exist. In this way, nature preserves her species. Yet when a person is able to overcome fear and is possessed with a wave of courage, is it not a case of nature not only preserving, but enhancing her species? For courage, with its surge and outpour of blood from the heart to the arteries, propels one to act boldly, making adventure and conquest possible. These are the men and women whose actions lead the human race, whether in the world of politics or philosophy or exploration. Others, checked by fear, with constitutions more timid or feeble, their blood pooled in the veins, remain ordinary spectators, mere bystanders with cold hands.

  * * *

  IT IS still the majestic Mysterium he looks up to, but Virgil Adams realizes he no longer sees with the same eyes. How to describe the feeling of desire that in the past so encompassed him? He had once looked up to the mountain with an overwhelming yearning, enticed by the beauty and splendor of what seemed so very far from his reach. It was a yearning that had come to him as a boy when playing in a woods or splashing about in the ocean: he could not get enough of the very thing that so immersed him. It was a hunger not to be sated, a desire for something he could not get at and yet he so desperately wished to have, more so, overwhelmingly needed. But no matter how far he walked into the forest, or how vigorously he swam in the sea, he could never be close enough to the object at hand. He could not grasp the very thing and make it stay. He could not swallow it and keep it inside him. He would feel the craving for its illimitable beauty in the pit of his stomach, like an ache, or feel it deep in his groin, like a lust, and sometimes the sensation moved high into his chest, leaving him wanting and breathless and strangely elated. For the woods and the waters and the peaks were perpetually a forelooking, forever a beyond, always an elsewhere though he be held in the very midst of it. What in him had changed?