by Ed Caesar
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For my mother, Janie Caesar, and in memory of my father, Lieutenant Commander Ben Caesar, Royal Navy (1938–1982)
Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No… and yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfaction… fulfilled a destiny. To struggle and to understand—never this last without the other; such is the law.
—George Mallory, “Mont Blanc from the Col du Géant by the Eastern Buttress,” Alpine Journal, 1918
Then, with many other men,
He was transported in a cattle-truck
To the scene of war.
For a while chance was kind
Save for an inevitable
Searing of the mind.
—Herbert Read, “Kneeshaw Goes to War,” 1918
Keep smiling.
—Maurice Wilson, letter to Enid Evans, 1933
PROLOGUE THE WORLD WILL BE ON FIRE
• March 20–April 10, 1934 •
Before he began his trek to Mount Everest, Maurice Wilson changed into a magnificent costume. He was thirty-five years old. The fine blond hair of his youth had run to silver and thinned to a widow’s peak. Two or three machine-gun scars blotted the skin on his left arm and back, like pitch marks on a golf green. His arm still ached, every day. So did his knees—the legacy of an inexpert parachute jump made more than a year earlier. Nevertheless, he was fit, strong, and rail thin after months of training, intermittent fasting, and long periods of sober living. Wilson was not a handsome man. Not exactly. The features were too pronounced, the picture was hung a little askew. But even in his current unkempt state, when a scruffy new beard carpeted his usually smooth cheeks, he was beguiling. Many women had fallen hard for Wilson’s blue-green eyes, and his boyish grin, and his percussive Yorkshire accent, with its sonorous vowels and dropped aitches. He was unlike other men. He was difficult to ignore.
Night had fallen. Wilson dressed in his hotel room, in the hill town of Darjeeling, which lay in the northeast of Britain’s vast Indian empire. In a few hours, Wilson would start to walk more than three hundred miles to the north side of Everest, in Tibet. He then planned to climb the mountain, alone—and, in doing so, to become the first person ever to reach its summit, the highest place on earth.
The idea was mad any way you looked at it. No climber from four separate official British expeditions—the first in 1921, and the latest only the previous year, in 1933—had reached the summit of Everest. Those parties comprised the best alpinists of their generation and were supported by teams of porters carrying bountiful supplies. The odds of a novice such as Wilson succeeding where those missions had failed were vanishingly long, as every pundit had told him. But Wilson was not interested in expert opinion, otherwise he would have turned back long ago. He was interested in the power of human will, and the motions of the soul. Everest was a job he felt was within him.
Wilson had been expressly forbidden by the British authorities—both in India and at home in England—to make the journey. The Tibetan government had not given him permission to enter their kingdom, and the British were anxious to avoid a diplomatic incident. If Wilson was discovered at any point on his trek, he would be arrested. He knew he was in most danger of apprehension on the first part of his journey: out of Darjeeling, and through the British protectorate of Sikkim, with its leech-infested rivers, verdant forests, and sparkling waterfalls. For that reason, he had paid his hotel bill six months in advance, to throw the police off the scent. He also planned to leave Darjeeling at midnight, in disguise as a Tibetan priest.
Wilson had hired three Bhutias, Sikkimese men of Tibetan ancestry, to accompany him to Everest. The most senior of them, an experienced climber and porter named Tsering, helped him into his outfit. The disguise was dazzling: a Chinese brocaded waistcoat in gold, with gold buttons at the side, which Wilson thought made him look like a circus trainer; dark blue cotton slacks; a bright red silk girdle. To finish the look, Wilson wore a fur-lined Bhutia hat, with large earflaps to cover his white man’s hair, dark glasses to hide his white man’s eyes, and he carried a decorative umbrella. Somewhat ruining the effect, he also wore a pair of hobnail boots—huge, high, heavy items with nails driven into the soles for extra grip. A ludicrous outfit. Wilson loved it. He and Tsering had laughed themselves silly when Wilson first tried on the disguise.
Before Wilson left the hotel, he wrote a final letter to Enid Evans, his soul mate—and the only person who believed from the very beginning of the adventure that Wilson would succeed in reaching and climbing Everest. Enid was slim, winsome, brown-haired, stylish, vivacious, and married. Wilson was cripplingly in love with her, and not just because of her faith in his mission. She, too, was enraptured by the ebullient adventurer, and his wild stories. Recently, their affair had flourished in letters.
Now, Wilson was leaving Darjeeling. With no more opportunities to send mail before his climb on Everest, he wrote to Enid for a final time, telling her about his beautiful, absurd outfit, and about when he might return from the mountain. He wrote that she would be with him, in his thoughts, the whole way. Before he signed off, he told Enid, if she were with him, “I might let you kiss me.”
With his letter finished and addressed, Wilson made his final preparations. He carried with him much of his climbing equipment, disguised in what looked like bags of wheat. He had also sewn many pockets into his outfit. In one, he placed a small emerald-green diary, made in Japan, upon whose cover the words Present Time Book were embossed. His entries in the diary would eventually resemble a long and intimate letter to his lover alone. (“Of course,” he wrote, “I’m writing all this to Enid, she’s been the golden rod from the start.”) In another pocket, he stashed a pistol, to ward off brigands in Tibet. Around his neck was a gold cross with RITA engraved on one side, and AMOR VINCIT OMNIA on the other. Amor vincit omnia: “love conquers all.”
* * *
Midnight ticked around. Zero hour. Wilson left the hotel by the back door, then met Tsering on the street. The plan was to rendezvous with the other two Bhutias, Tewang and Rinzing, at midday, in a hideout near the banks of the river Tista, on the outskirts of Darjeeling. Wilson and Tsering walked out of town in the early hours of the morning without incident. As day broke, they entered the valley of the raging Tista River, when—to their horror—they saw a policeman on the road. The officer spotted the pair before they could slip away. Wilson had no choice but to perform his ridiculous charade with as much confidence as he could muster. He was five feet eight and a half inches tall—too big for a Tibetan. He walked with his aching knees bent, to obscure his height. He then opened his umbrella, carrying it low over his face, to shield his features.
The policeman ordered them to stop. Tsering spoke to the officer. Wilson stood there under his umbrella, as dumb as a lamppost. All the while, he calculated his next move. If the policeman searched his belongings, he was done for. Not only were his bags full of climbing supplies, and a movie camera, but there was the revolver. A priest with a gun!
By some good fortune, the policeman took Wilson’s silence and curious behavior to be a sign of modesty. He allowed the pair to continue up the road, unsearched. Wilson hoped his escape from Darjeeling had remained a secret. Not only
had he prepaid his hotel bill, but he had sworn his Bhutia coconspirators to silence about their joining his Everest trip. He knew that eventually his absence would be noted, but he surmised that his precautions would, at the least, buy him some time.
Wilson and Tsering had plotted their clandestine trek into Tibet with the care of advancing generals. It was three hundred miles of walking and climbing. Their path followed the Tista River nearly all the way through Sikkim. In Tibet, the route bisected the peaks of Kangchenjau and Chomiomo, which both stood higher than twenty-two thousand feet. It then followed the Yaru River past the ancient, beautiful, isolated fortresses of Khampa Dzong and Tengkye Dzong, and then across a desolate plain that looked to Edward Shebbeare, a mountaineer from a previous Everest expedition, like “the mountains of the moon.”
At Shekar Dzong, a fairy-tale place—a fortified monastery and village, consisting of a crazy series of regular white buildings built into the side of a hill—the route swung south, toward the great peaks of the Himalayas, the Rongbuk Monastery, and, finally, into the valley that led to Everest. It was a journey from leech-filled jungle, to ankle-breaking foothill, to the high desert, where the air was thin and the nights were frigid, to the mountain that inhabited Wilson’s dreams.
* * *
Wilson’s chief fear was being arrested. The previous year, the official British expedition to Everest had traveled on a similar route to the one he planned to take, with some minor variations. Unlike Wilson, they had smoothed their political problems before they set off. Each member of the 1933 British expedition carried a passport stamped with a message, written in Tibetan, granting him access to “the snowy mountain of Chamalung”—one of the local descriptions for Everest—in exchange for not shooting any wildlife in the sacred places of Tibet, and with the promise they would not beat their servants. Wilson possessed no such document. However, he knew that he was unlikely to be apprehended once he was actually in the wild highlands of Tibet—a sparsely populated kingdom. The quicker he could slip across the border, then, the better. To avoid detection, Wilson decided to travel almost exclusively at night, and to camp during the day. He had also bought a pony to carry some of his gear. Two of the Bhutias had gone ahead to a town called Kalimpong to fetch the animal.
Tsering and Wilson rendezvoused with Tewang, Rinzing, and the pony, as planned. In the days ahead Wilson’s party would sometimes travel in pairs—leapfrogging each other to prepare camps, or to shop for food—but for now, they traveled as a foursome. The trek was fast and eventful. When they encountered another policeman at night, along the banks of the Tista River, the four men dived into a bed of nettles to hide. Wilson was stung from head to toe. When he rested in the daytime, he sometimes slept in the open with his face buried in the crook of his elbow, to obscure his Western features, while sand flies buzzed and bit him. Curious Sikkimese villagers came to inspect his unmoving form. Tsering told them that the prostrate man was a deaf, mute priest who was very sick.
The privations of the trek did not bother Wilson much. He could take heat, leeches, insect stings. He had suffered worse. There was a thrill, as he wrote to Enid, in the “do and the dare” of the adventure. The simple act of sneaking out of Darjeeling and heading for the mountain was its own triumph. His diary entries, written in pencil, told the story of a man reveling in his audacity:
Moved on again Mch 23rd 2 a.m. and camped just after dawn. 7 p.m. Struck camp and had terrific climb for 3 hours. Stopped at inn while boys and pony had drink. Stayed outside. Down steep grade 1 hour and camped at dawn after sleeping in open few hours. Mch 24th Sat. Had eggs and milk from bazaar for breakfast. Party marvellous, couldn’t wish for better, very happy. People keep light all night in house to keep away spirits. S. [Tsering] has little red bag Lama gave him for good luck. Had bath and feel fine. Time doesn’t drag at all.
The route soon became tough. One night in Sikkim, the band of runaways walked sixteen miles on a mountain track that seemed to Wilson like a “reversing spiral staircase.” The pony almost fell off a cliff. At the end of their nighttime trek, they bartered for oranges with a passing team of workers sleeping on the road. In the morning, the men passed Wilson again, carrying yards of electric cable bound for the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, and singing a song that sounded Russian to Wilson’s ears.
* * *
In the quiet moments during his escape from Darjeeling, Wilson reflected on his situation. In the ten months since he’d left England in his airplane, many inches of newspaper had been expended on what most people believed was a doomed mission, and what he believed was his destiny. Men from the Air Ministry in London had tried to stop him from flying to India. He had ignored their warnings. British government officials had made several attempts along the way to turn him back. He had outfoxed every one of them. He was banned from flying over Nepal to Everest, and his plane was impounded. He decided to walk. Spies observed his movements in Darjeeling, lest he make a break for the mountain. They had no idea he had left town. Now, here he was, halfway to Everest, having bested all the naysayers and pen pushers who stood in his way.
As Wilson walked, he contemplated the lives of the people he traveled with, as well as the simplicity, calm, and contentment of his current existence. On the night of March 26, his diary noted both a change in the climate, and in his mood:
Getting cooler daily… Quite interesting to estimate nearness of dawn by the many jungle sounds, the bird calls are so pretty, and I use one when wanting anything inside tent. Thank heaven, no tent today and can see the sunshine. Sun just coming over hill and shining on book as I write. Mountain stream few yards away. Have never been out of sound of rushing waters since leaving Darjeeling… Jungle life is wonderfully attractive, the best I have known yet.… Another couple of days shall be wearing woollies [woolen underwear]. Hope when I’m sun black, shall be able to visit inns with party. Bought pack of cards and feel like game, but these people get so excited playing, might give the show away… Just had wholemeal bread. This stuff will play no small part in success. Pity the chappie is keeping it so near his socks in rucksack. S. [Tsering] is cleaning my revolver. What a roving and happy race these people are. You will see the happy camp fires all along the road after the days work. From dark till dawn. The rice is cooked, and after the evening meal, out come the cigs and they enjoy themselves for a couple of hours before getting down to it. Green grass for my pillow, green grass for my bed, whilst we poor “Civilised” saps are running around in a perpetual state of nervous excitement, and getting WHERE?
Wilson’s diary continued in its oscillation between the ecstatic (“beautiful red bird fluttering round here, vivid vermillion”) and the banal (“6 boiled eggs… porridge too”). He knew he was close to breaking out of Sikkim and into Tibet. He paused to take in the extraordinary scenery: near-vertical mountains on either side of him, and a waterfall ahead. He felt, he wrote, like “the Prince of Wales at a Highland gathering.”
Wilson could by now see snow on the hilltops in the distance. That evening, he watched the light die on the white-capped mountains. He knew that in less than two days he would be hearing the crunch of snow under his own boots. Wilson still traveled at night, with his umbrella up, and rested in his tent during the day—just in case he bumped into anyone paying him unwelcome attention. He longed to walk freely. As the party climbed, they looked behind them and saw a dense haze of heat in the valley. Now, on the higher ground, a cool breeze dried their sweat. When they stopped, Tsering brewed Wilson mugs of tea.
The landscape turned flatter and the weather even cooler as the party approached the border. They passed villages full of deserted houses, their inhabitants now working the fields in the warmer lowlands of Sikkim. Patches of snow lay on the ground. The air was now so thin that it was hard to start a fire. Tsering had bought a set of bellows to help with cooking and heating. He told his boss that, in Tibet, there was little firewood, so they used dried pony dung for fuel—a custom that tickled Wilson. He checked his altimeter on Thursday, March
29. The machine told him they were at 15,600 feet: 9,000 feet higher than Darjeeling. Wilson began to arrange his kit and his food supplies for Everest.
* * *
On Friday, March 30, Wilson crossed the border. His diary was exultant:
“Now in forbidden Tibet and feel like sending government a wire ‘Told you so’ or ‘How’d you like your eggs boiled.’ ”
The victory fizzed in Wilson’s blood. He set out on a fearsome trek the next day. He felt he could walk in the daylight now, although he still wore his priest’s disguise as a precaution. He estimated that the group covered between twenty-five and thirty miles on that Saturday alone. On the Tibetan plateau, where a fast, cold wind blew in their faces, where the sun beat down, and the elevation was around fifteen thousand feet above sea level, the effort was Olympian. Wilson staggered into camp that night, sunburned, exhausted, but thrilled at the progress he had made.
The party decided to rest up until the following morning to recover from their exertions. When they set off again, the ground underneath them had turned almost to sand, and a strong wind blew earth and grit into their faces. Wilson didn’t mind. He thought the villages they passed looked like the North African settlements he had once flown over in his plane: the houses arranged around little courtyards. There was something of the desert about Tibet. Wilson loved its bleakness, and its beauty. The roof of the world.
The Bhutias were starting to feel “a pain at the temples” due to the altitude, which they alleviated by chewing chili peppers, but Wilson himself claimed to be unaffected. Nothing, it seemed, could dampen his joy. He wrote, “The boys are already talking about what we are going to do on our way back.… It is lovely that everyone is so optimistic.”