The Moth and the Mountain

by Ed Caesar

  [Karma Paul] tells me that life in Tibet is very interesting—they live in mud huts, walls a yard thick, and plank flooring on account of the cold. Even the poorest peasant keeps a lamp burning day and night to God. I should not have any difficulty in finding a place for my bed on the way back as everyone would be only too glad of me. There are hermits in the hills who are praying day and night for the good of the world.…

  Will try and take good notice of my surroundings on the trip through to the Base Camp so that I can make my last letter interesting. Just imagine! Dumped at the foot of the great Mount Everest—ALONE! It will be marvellous! I shall own the world tho’ nothing near so much as when I’ve reached the top.

  If fitness permits, I have notion that I shall do the job 2 or 3 times just to show the sceptical nuts that there was no fluke in it!

  You may think that I am taking too much for granted as it all depends on getting the permit. Let me say that I have never doubted for one moment—as Christ says, faith moves mountains! I have unbounded faith in myself and my objective and have never had a single doubt—quite apart from present developments. Otherwise I should have been on the way back home ere this.

  Have read your letter about 381 times already. Had a pick-me-up been necessary, I am sure it has fitted the bill.

  Am still going on walks with the girlfriend of 65!

  Should there be a letter amongst the budget from Jean Batten, please forward: I sent her a card of sympathy from Karachi where she had her crash. Don’t think my heart is touched: if you introduced me to another Enid who was a dollar princess, she wouldn’t have a second’s consideration—my thoughts are elsewhere. Truth.

  By the way—had a happy thought this p.m. Am going to spend the first night at 101 on the floor in Len’s dressing room. Tell him to get his tail suit pressed, we’re going to celebrate at the Savoy—after supper dance. Won’t you be on a fuss with two chaperones? Don’t suppose there would be much dancing for all that!

  Hell! How we’ll talk!

  Best of love to you both.

  Ever

  MAURICE

  xx (and I’ll never collect these either)

  In September, Wilson’s hope that Karma Paul would ease Wilson’s passage to Everest began to dwindle. Despite Paul’s experience on previous expeditions, he was not a diplomat. His promise to present Wilson’s request to the Dalai Lama was never fulfilled. (And even if this pledge had been kept, what influence would a translator have enjoyed with the highest man in the land?) Paul was accustomed to assisting official British expeditions in which the political function had already been performed. He could do little for this fly-by-night Englishman who seemed to have the world against him.

  Weeks passed, in which Wilson and Paul continued as wary coconspirators, achieving little. Wilson had finally arranged to sell his Moth to an Englishman named R. H. Cassell, for £500 (worth around £35,000 or $44,000 today), but had still not received the money. Wilson’s funds were short, and it was nearly winter. He began to see that his trek to Everest should wait until the spring.

  He was not idle, however. One fine day in October, Wilson made the journey to Tiger Hill, about eleven miles’ drive out of Darjeeling. On a clear day, you could see Everest from Tiger Hill, as well as the mountains Makalu and Kanchenjunga. Wilson saw Everest that day through a telescope, but the experience, strangely, was a disappointment. The world’s highest mountain, 107 miles away as the crow flew, looked smaller than Makalu, which was closer. What’s more, a crowd of people were around—including his sixtysomething “girlfriend,” Mrs. Kitchen—whose chatter spoiled Wilson’s communion with the object of his obsession for so many months.

  Shortly after his trip to Tiger Hill, Wilson secured a place on a group trek into Sikkim—the territory he would have to cross before entering Tibet. It would be a good test of his fitness and his plan. He decided to take Karma Paul on the trek with him. The British government men in Darjeeling, by now well notified of Wilson’s intentions, also used it as a chance to test Wilson’s reliability: while he was gone, envoys were sent to check his lodgings in Darjeeling and to call upon the walking party in Sikkim, to ensure Wilson had not stolen into the forbidden kingdom.

  Wilson soon realized that Sikkim was gorgeous. This sultry, hilly heaven of the natural world was home to snow leopards, black bears, red pandas, golden eagles, and five hundred types of butterflies. On the lower slopes, where leeches grew fat, and figs, bananas, laurels, and orchids flourished, the atmosphere was subtropical. On the higher slopes, the landscape was punctuated by giant oaks, maples, and chestnut trees. In these spots, Wilson was reminded of New Zealand. Higher still, above twelve thousand feet, were junipers and cypresses, and then, finally, wild meadows on which rhododendrons and wildflowers grew.

  On the Sikkim trek, Wilson’s dislike of Paul intensified. Wilson told Enid, in a letter from the trek, “I don’t trust this chap too much; I could feel it throughout the whole trip that he was evolving ideas whereby he could get at me; however, I’m one too many for him and my plans are cast iron.” Also, apart from his command of languages, Paul didn’t seem useful. When the trekking party briefly entered a border town of Nepal, Wilson was not allowed to cross, “by general order of the Maharaja,” even though Paul knew the border guard. Instead, Wilson was made to wait alone while the rest of the group ate a dish of potatoes and eggs with their Nepali hosts.

  Regardless of the worsening relationship between Wilson and his fixer, the Englishman kept imagining his path to victory. He told Enid he had a “good bo-peep at the hills during the past few days and have formulated a planned route; I might have to swim a couple of rivers in dodging the police of Sikkim as it would be just too humorous to be returned to Darjeeling under police escort.”

  Then, one morning in Sikkim, Wilson saw Everest for a second time, for around half an hour. He was sleeping on his own, in the open, while the other trekkers lodged in a nearby bungalow, when the great mountain appeared to him, through a break in the clouds. Its peak burned red in the dawn. Unlike Wilson’s first encounter with Everest, this sight of the mountain was unspoiled and pure. His determination to stand at the top of the world redoubled.

  * * *

  Letters arrived from home. One came from Wilson’s mother, with a summons enclosed, ordering him to appear before the French consul in Liverpool about his flying escapades, which gave Wilson a chuckle. (“What a game!” he wrote.) In the same letter, Wilson’s mother said she was concerned he was “chasing a chimera” and that he should give up his Everest obsession. Perhaps, she suggested, he could try to find a job in India. Maurice sensed the hand of his oldest brother, Fred, in this warning. Fred had always been against Maurice’s mission. He told Enid he’d rather die than give up. He also implored Enid that she, of all people, must not lose belief.

  “If there’d been any reason or cause for anyone to have lost faith before this, surely I should have been the one, being the principal actor in the show,” he wrote.

  Wilson’s life stalled as he waited for spring to roll around. He stayed in bed some days. He went to the movies on others. He met another “girlfriend,” a young woman who was accompanying an elderly and devoutly Catholic aunt. Wilson and the younger woman struck up a friendship. She was, in his words, “all tied up and terribly self-conscious.” When Wilson brought her back from tea, or the cinema, the aunt checked all the cupboards and hiding places in the house to make sure Wilson wasn’t in there, too.

  The aunt needn’t have worried. Wilson apparently had no devious intentions. During this period, he and his sixty-five-year-old friend, Mrs. Kitchen, spent much of their time together. She told Wilson that she had every faith in his success on Everest.

  One day, Mrs. Kitchen presented Wilson with one of her most treasured possessions: a gold cross, which had formerly belonged to her son. Wilson told Enid about the cross in a letter. He was deeply touched by the gift. It had been given to the young man by his fiancée “when he went to France” to fight in the war.
Inscribed on one side was his fiancée’s name, RITA, and on the other, in Latin, AMOR VINCIT OMNIA, “love conquers all.” Wilson put the cross around his neck. Like the mauve ribbon and the flag of friendship, it became a treasured talisman. He told Enid, “The greatest power on earth is love, provided it is love of good and not selfish; what a pity that more people don’t know it.”

  In the same letter, Wilson attached a poem, which he knew to be of low quality—and which he knew would tickle Enid pink. He sent the first half to her at the end of November. It began:

  Mauvey an’ Me

  The weather’s fine on Edgware Downs,

  A glorious flying day,

  When we took from London Town,

  That glorious day in May.

  No qualms of failure did we have

  As through the blue we climbed;

  Your mission’s in real earnest lad,

  The prompting from behind.

  Just take a look at this and that,

  Make sure you’re keepin’ on your track;

  You’ve started now, there’s no turn back,

  So trust to your bit o’ mauve ribbon.

  O’er Channel ships, o’er wood and dell,

  Words are not known wherewith to tell

  Of joys and hopes which cast their spell

  O’er me and mi bit o’ mauve ribbon.

  Through Springing dales in Rhineland fair,

  Nature’s grace could but compare

  With the gladness of Faith in the Do and the Dare

  Of me and mi bit o’ mauve ribbon.

  In Freiburg we landed on scheduled time,

  The Munster was pealing her welcoming chime

  As we taxied over the customs line,

  Just me and mi bit o’ mauve ribbon.

  “Hallo, Herr Wilson, is that you,”

  As to my hostess I rang through,

  Yes, but please prepare for two,

  ’Cos there’s me and mi bit o’ mauve ribbon.

  Through Basle and Geneva, on we ran,

  We tried through the Alps, to land in Milan,

  But we hadn’t the height and we nearly came bang;

  I was saved by mi bit o’ mauve ribbon.

  Lyons, Marseilles, on to Rome’s citadels,

  Past Genoa and Tower of Pisa,

  We dipped in at Nice and at Naples en route,

  And arrived safe again at Catania

  Then off to Tunis through cottonwool clouds,

  ’Twas the first flying “blind” I had done:

  But through side-slips and dives, came a voice clear and loud,

  “Trust your mauve ribbon you bun.”

  We landed at Bezirte, ’twas prohibited I knew;

  Promptly pinched, then escorted into town;

  And we might have got a hanging or at least a month or two,

  Had mi bit o’ mauve ribbon let me down.

  Over Afrique’s northern desert, saw the Legion sweating blood,

  Past camel train and Arab’s lonely tent,

  And we merrily sang duo under blazing golden sun;

  Yes, mi bit o’ mauve and I were well content.

  That night we spent at Gabes, on to Sirte then we flew,

  At Benghasi we put down again to rest;

  Of all the Godly Inspirations, I can truthfully tell you,

  There was none like mauvey, me and “Ever-Wrest.”

  Sunday, sighted Cairo, past her pyramids of gold,

  The aged river curling down below;

  And from the grandeur of the buildings on the Gyppo aerodrome,

  I concluded there was corner there as of old.

  ’Twas 4 a.m. and nippy when we took to wings again,

  The desert dawn broke golden through the haze;

  Suez, then to Gaza, then on to Bethlehem,

  Where we once were shewn the errors of our ways.

  By the Poet Nauseate.

  (to be continued).

  Wilson did not finish the poem for another few weeks, and Enid would have to wait several months to read the second part.

  * * *

  In November, Wilson set frivolous matters aside and began to focus on his task. In preparation for his march to Everest, he cut down to one meal a day, then just to fruit, and then to nothing but water. By purifying his body, he believed he could purify his soul. Each fast was an opportunity for spiritual and physical rebirth. After a period of abnegation, he thought that the body was rebuilt even stronger. Explaining this uncommon practice in letters home, he often quoted the Gospel of John: Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

  Wilson’s belief in fasting seemed to exist at odds with his bombast, vitality, and conviviality, but it was not an idle notion. Wilson put faith in the regenerative power of asceticism, and the importance of sustained periods of thought and reflection—not unlike the Indian holy men he had encountered on his recent travels. He had spent the past twelve months in the sincere belief that these practices had saved his life. The physical changes he suffered during his fasts were severe. In one letter to Enid, he described how he worried that his hip bones would tear the bedsheets when he rolled over at night. The image was seemingly designed to conjure both morbid and erotic thoughts.

  In these weeks of reflection at the end of 1933 and beginning of 1934, Wilson tried to explain himself to Enid in letters. One letter from December 9 is as rambling as one might expect from a man who had not eaten a square meal in twenty days. Wilson’s loftier prose is interspersed with seemingly banal memories of home, and requests to place various bets in upcoming horse races.

  Wilson’s situation—starving himself in a hilltop town, six thousand miles from home, about to attempt an extraordinary feat of mountaineering for which he was scantly prepared—clearly stirred complicated emotions within him. He told Enid how Christmas would be “lonesome as far as worldly contacts go, yet have a feeling it will be the happiest Xmas I shall ever have spent.” On his own, he was digging through his memories of Christmases past. One in particular, from nearly thirty years ago, sang out: his “kid brother” Stanley’s Christmas early-morning sweet shop, sold out by 6:00 a.m.; then a Christmas Day food fight with “spuds and onions flying,” for which all four Wilson boys were punished.

  With these thoughts roiling in his mind, and his weight dropping precipitously, Christmas Day 1933 approached. Wilson eventually received his airplane money, which he used to settle his debts. His relationship with Karma Paul, meanwhile, came to a definite end. Wilson’s modified plan was McGovern-esque: to enter Tibet in the early spring, disguised as a priest. But he needed some local help with the new arrangement. He searched Darjeeling for reliable porters.

  On Christmas Eve, Wilson broke his fast. He left his bed, put on his best clothes, and sang carols with other English settlers in the mists of the hill station. In a letter home, he wished Len and Enid a happy Christmas and all the best for 1934.

  “There’s no telling where a new year might lead you,” he wrote. “Keep smiling.”

  * * *

  On the afternoon of January 15, 1934, a violent earthquake shook Nepal, Tibet, and northern India. Its epicenter was six miles south of Mount Everest, and its effect was ruinous. Huge cracks appeared in city streets in Nepal, and almost every building was damaged or destroyed. The town of Birganj, which Wilson had recently visited, was reduced to dust and stone. The telephone line from Birganj to Kathmandu, upon which Wilson had recently entreated the maharaja, was lost. In Bihar state, where Wilson had stayed until his train ride to Darjeeling, the towns were filled with rubble. Nearly twelve thousand people were reported to have died. Mahatma Gandhi visited Bihar and made a speech in which he claimed that the earthquake was divine retribution for its continued practice of labeling its low-caste people “untouchable.”

  In Darjeeling, where the earthquake destroyed some buildings but not the whole town, Wilson looked
around in wonder. He did not believe in Gandhi’s vituperative God. As Wilson wrote when he was given his gold cross, “The greatest power on earth is love.” Like a good son of a Cinderella Club man, he began immediately to help dig through the wreckage, and to find survivors. It seems no other white men joined him. In the weeks that followed the earthquake, Wilson continually bent his back alongside Indian, Sikkimese, and Nepali men to start rebuilding broken houses. He was still weak from his fast, but he regarded his work as not only his moral duty, but also good training. When he was not hauling masonry, he walked long distances to gain fitness. Day by day, his strength returned.

  At the end of January, he wrote to Enid, telling her, “You know I haven’t a girl-friend (and farther away than ever from having one) and have been regarding you as more or less a half-way house; naturally under the circs.” It was as if he wanted to pin down whatever ephemeral arrangement the two of them shared before he took off for Everest. Killingly, you can’t know how Enid responded. None of her letters to Wilson survive. A British official who read some of their correspondence later in 1934 reported that Enid was evidently “very fond” of Wilson.

  Meanwhile, Wilson’s plans were hardening. Three Bhutia porters who had recently returned to the hill town from Ruttledge’s 1933 Everest expedition had heard that an Englishman might need assistance in reaching Everest. They reported to his lodgings to learn more. Wilson liked Tsering, Tewang, and Rinzing immediately, and he hired them as a trio. His judgment was sound. Tewang had experience from both the 1924 and the 1933 expeditions. He had climbed as high as Camp V on Everest, at more than twenty-five thousand feet. Although Wilson could not have known this, Ruttledge would later describe Tewang in his book as “efficient, completely reliable, and never idle,” performing “every office from porter mess-man to nurse, in a manner beyond praise.”

  Wilson’s goal was still to climb the mountain alone. But after his exploratory trek into Sikkim in 1933, he now understood that he would need some help on his way to Everest, particularly as he planned to make the journey mostly at night, to avoid detection. The role of the Bhutia porters was simply to deliver Wilson to the base of the mountain. Wilson knew he was putting their freedom in peril. When they entered Tibet, these men would be abetting a crime. To distance the Bhutias from blame, Wilson did not tell them his real name. Instead, he asked them to call him Runnerbusy, an eccentric choice. Runnerbusy sounded like an each-way bet in the Grand National—and the Bhutias couldn’t wrap their heads around it. Most often, they referred to Wilson simply as the Sahib, or boss.