‘Shall we have a break chéri?’ I don’t have a tube for my water, so need to stop and unload my pack. Relief for a few minutes… time doesn’t count.’
‘Here, let’s have some biscuits and mandarins’.
Loup sucks greedily on his tube of water and rips off his shirt, which is drenched with sweat. I want to do the same.
‘Christ I’m unfit’, he says, collapsing onto a primrose-speckled rock.
We eat lunch in silent complicity. We hear the roar of water not far off, but cannot yet see its source. The mountainside opposite falls steeply, and the trees walk a tightrope across treacherous ravines. Everything feels at once old and new. I am enthralled. No longer an escargot, but a mountain goat. And then I remember that time is important if we want to reach the top. Setting off again, rounding a jumble of boulders, I stop, astounded. Here is the torrent falling, crashing below. The sound is deafening. A vertical wall of water jets down at breakneck speed; declaring that it alone can do so without breaking. Tantalizing, it beckons to be touched, as if I could simply lean across the vaporous air and trace my fingers through its lace. As if this sensation might be worth the falling.
Loup catches up, and I beg him to take a video. Impatient with my incessant need to share everything with my daughters, he nevertheless records ‘un très bel souvenir.’ Traversing this section, I am slower and unsteady. That old foe vertigo pushes up my lunch. I notice for the first time the heaviness of my pack, as it threatens to dislodge me when I take a wrong step. Upon reaching the first pass, the trail is gentle, meandering alongside the glacial melt. I am relieved to approach the col where the mountain begins to disrobe her forest. But now that she is bare above the tree line, the sun takes advantage and is unrelenting. Our packs seem to swell with the heat. Zigzagging again up slippery shale, I plant my shepherd’s baton against dizziness.
This slender beech my lifesaver; I thank the boy whose family I met along the Chemin de Compsostelle, his prized pocketknife once whittled this gnarled bark, to reveal creamy bone-core. The sweet spot is where the stick licks into my sweated palm, steadying my grasp. Worrying my thumb and forefinger across its tip, I think of the nape of the neck of my baby grandson, the trace of down behind his ear; of the velvet pad of my dog’s paw, soft in my hand. I think of the intimacy of my husband.
Where has Loup gone? Has he stopped to splash and slurp the icy water? Crystalline water, as we’ve never seen before… never before have we climbed so abruptly out of our banal bitumen into something so shimmery, as if we’ve stepped into the dreamy ether of a Turner canvas. Or is it the celestial creepiness of a Caspar David Friedrich? Whilst waiting for Loup, I think again about those recently lost. About the grief on the other side of the neighbouring summit… the spectre of pulverised plane parts. I count the miniature blades of alpine grass dividing paradise from hell. I imagine clawing for the crocheted corner of a baby blanket trapped under rock, wondering, did blood drip down this brook? The local fireman told me it was all over so quickly. No survivors to rescue once they’d finally climbed up here; no colour left, no stubborn life to stain the snow.
Afterwards, when Loup and I stop below in the village on our way home, we are silenced before the flags of nations commemorating their innocents and their wise. How could one son, his devilish sadness, torpedo them all into the face of Wonderland? There’s a conundrum for you, Pascal. Not that you took souls with you, but you did want to exact some kind of revenge… upon those who had hurt you. And those who hadn’t. Your young brother, for example.
Well, that’s what your letter said, anyway. Are some things so unforgiveable, that you must leave for your little sister to read, hateful words that can never be unsaid? But who am I to talk of hateful words, isn’t that why we came to the mountains, to stop my snail-slime of hateful words? Sometimes I think I recognize what got to you Pascal, when back at the hut I look at myself in my gift from Loup in better days. The handsome oak-framed mirror, (absurdly refined in our misery hut), reflects back someone I do not like. The tight lines around my mouth: a sphincter around a drain; and the kitchen knife clamouring in my ear. But I’m not thinking about that today, in Wonderland. I’ve quite forgotten about the menace of knives and forks. But just thinking about that one big, unfathomable unhappiness, right there on that summit, got me thinking about you, Pascal.
‘Coo-eee?’ I call after Loup, anxious. He appears around a boulder, brow and hair dripping.
‘Are you ok hon?’
‘No energy…. I’m totally fucked!’
Loup is drenched. He sucks greedily on his water tube.
‘We can stop if you like… you go in front…’
‘No … you keep going. Anyway… you know I’ll catch you up on the descent.’
Reassured, I plough upwards. A log bridge leads toward an elaborate hut. Ah, this must be the famous Refuge. I’d read about it, but staying in close proximity with numerous others was not our intention. Pathologically anti-social, we seek the void. We have both neglected to bring money, so not even a drink is in order. Embarrassingly, the trail leads me right up to the chalet, and I have to cross its magnificently appointed deck to continue. Barefoot people sit drinking and chatting, their hiking boots lined up at the door; for them, it is evidently the end of the day. When I approach, they stop and stare.
A tall man in yellow stripy pants, orange crocks, wisps of receding blonde hair and cerulean eyes direct from the sky, regards me with curiosity then welcomes me in French. Loup has dropped behind again. So, when the sunny local asks,
‘Vous allez où? Where are you going at this late hour…aren’t you staying?’
I am bamboozled, wondering if it is the height of rudeness to pass through his Refuge, and not stay. Not even buy a drink?
‘Ah,’ I blabber, thinking hurry up Loup,
‘Nous allons camper au près the summit… we’ve got all our own gear,’ I say flailing, unconvincing. My lack of alpine savvy is obvious. For one thing, it’s clear, I’m not from here.
So, I act on an impulse, changing everything forever. The polite thing to do is to ask this mountain-man about his mountain, right? To show at least that much respect.
Naturally, without further thought, I swerve around, unable to reach my map myself, aiming my backpack towards him,
‘Excuse me, would you mind showing us a good place to camp?’
Neither embarrassed nor hesitant, he unzips my backpack top pocket, removes my map, and shows me where to find shelter and water, carefully pointing out each of the landmarks he knows like his own skin.
Loup arrives in the midst of this exchange, but stands at a distance, silent. Awkwardness mires the air as mountain-man refolds my map, and I go to take it, but he deftly replaces it inside my backpack.
Again, he asks ‘are you sure you have everything, enough water, are you well prepared?’
He’s astonished when Loup suddenly pipes up in perfect French,
‘Oui. We do have everything we need, merci. Au revoir.’ Somewhat coldly.
The trail is just a goat track now, unmarked, apart from ragged cairns of stones. It is difficult to see the next stage, as often the slope obscures it. Loup lags further and further behind. I’m gaining ground, higher and higher. It seems Loup, though ten-years-younger and legs-twice-longer, can’t cope. As if he carries the world on his back. I wait, concerned and perplexed. Where is the indefatigable Loup who roller-bladed with his tent on his back, all the way from Adelaide to Darwin, with no support?
‘What’s up chéri? Is it your ankle?’
The ensuing venom is devastating. His eyes blacken, iron-grim.
‘Since when do you ask a stranger to dive into your personal affairs…the intimacy of your backpack?’
I am dumbstruck.
What follows is a precarious pantomime; thank Christ the marmots and the chamois are our sole audience. I am ashamed you had to see this Pascal. Loup is not himself. Or not somebody I recognise. Accusing me of seeking preferential treatment from a tot
al stranger, inviting attention.
‘How dare you ignore me, your husband, in favour of that man?’
At first I think this an act, a drama associated with his physical fatigue, rather than with legitimate outrage. But the toxins keep bursting open like pus. If we were animations, the face of Loup would be slime-green, his eyes sulphur-yellow, his pupils black pinpoints, and his tongue a fiery fork. I would be puffed up like a spiny puffer fish, purple with indignation, jagged hair on end, with steam exploding out of my ears.
‘Are you doing this deliberately Loup? Do you really want that divorce? Do you really believe I would suddenly take it into my head to deceive you?’
Forcing me to ask myself, would I wilfully spoil this Wonderland?
It’s a rueful thing that since that letter from the Bank, Loup has raised the notion of divorce more than once. Not out of malevolence, but as a roundabout way of saving my arse, and in so doing, his own. We had received only vague advice on how much jurisdiction the French had over my private affairs back home. But now we are playing a dangerous bluff.
Hurling the tent, stove, and wine out of his pack and chucking it on the ground, Loup spits:
‘You think I’m just inventing this? Hallucinating? You’re calling me mad now? Ok, so you want to be fucking independent, well be my guest! Vas te faire foutre!’
Then he takes off, miraculously finding speed in his vengeance. Loup is rarely aggressive, but when he is, he is without pity. Inviting me to fuck myself.
His eyes are the worst. Cold metallic pellets.
But I cannot let him leave like this. I hurriedly re-stuff everything into my pack, the extra volume bulging above my head. I hump the food, water and wine, tent and stove, up over gaping chasms, pursuing him. Shocked and stunned by his accusation, ashamed by the commotion of our egos. Lost in Wonderland. Guilty?
Loup’s momentum doesn’t last long.
Fixing my eyes upon his, I try and calm us both, playing the grown up,
‘Loup just think about where we are. For Christ’s sake, we can’t split up in this situation! Look at what’s around you… you’re fucking scaring me! Please tell me, is it your head, your stomach… where does it hurt?’
Terrified that he might have altitude sickness, or asthma, (neither of which he’d ever had before); terrified that he was the one with more mountain experience, and I was just a novice; terrified that we would allow such a stupid travesty to rupture our marriage; terrified that we had offended the mountain, and the souls that newly lay there.
Bluffing my way as the leader, we pushed on higher, because we did not know what else to do. Talking about it was impossible. Loup was clammed shut.
‘Do you think we should camp here…or there? It’s more sheltered here, no? But there’s no water, so maybe we should keep going…?’
I blabber, desperate for Loup to engage.
Heaving ourselves up and over enormous expanse of rock, crawling on all fours; I drag my pack behind me like a limp body. My legs are jelly. The sun has long ceased to shine, but we’d been so busy denouncing each other, we hadn’t noticed.
Loup looks frozen. I am too.
For some reason, I just keep moving. It will all be all right if we just keep moving. I was used to Loup taking control in these situations and had no idea of what to do.
‘Let’s leave our packs here and look for somewhere further up’, I say unwisely, stubborn to get higher. We quickly unfurl our woollen and thermal gear, beanies, and gloves. The temperature has dropped 20 degrees in the last hour.
‘Here Loup, please eat some chocolate, or at least a mandarin…please’.
He begrudgingly eats two mandarins, saying that nothing else would go down. Even though it’s been eight hours since our lunch snack. We climb and crawl and heave, losing sight of any cairn or trail. The higher reaches are a lunarscape. Delicate ferns, dwarf alpine rhododendrons and scant grasses offer the only living relief from the massive rubble of pink and grey rocks, some as vast and high as the sides of a building. Under happier circumstances, the bouldering would have been exhilarating. Tonight it is alien in every way. Loup’s face is putty-grey, and I shake uncontrollably. We regard each other with sudden and alarming clarity. Our situation is precarious. I start sobbing and try to hug my husband who, after a moment’s stiffness, softens into me.
Tentative, I say,
‘You know when you said I was accusing you of hallucinating, that your hurt was not legit, that your jealousy was just hysterical paranoia? Well honey, those are all things you have labelled me with in the past. I know how you felt, you want to vomit, disappear into the ground and jump off a bridge. You feel so fucking null…!’
‘Well actually, no Frey… I wouldn’t go so far as to jump off a bridge, it wasn’t worth that.’ Says Loup with a wan smile.
‘You know I have more sense of self-preservation than you.’
That was true. I feared my jealous rages, how they took on their own life, ending in humiliation and self-hatred. But it was only later that I considered those things. Wobbly, we descend. We regain our backpacks, and decide to set camp lower. Neither of us knows whether Loup has altitude sickness. Luckily, he doesn’t yet have a headache. But his breathing is laboured.
‘I just want to lie down and sleep,’ he keeps saying. I am afraid to let him do that. The sky is an infinite indigo vault, darkening at the edges, and we are specks who don’t even count. It is 9.40 pm.
Loup regains control when I cry in pain, my knees snapping from the extra weight of the pack, the difficult descent. More like his old self, he takes back some of my load; and is gentle. But he is still grey and I am still terrified. The air is bitter, but beautiful… we are on a rock-strewn path to the moon. Or, fathoms deep under the sea, which is where this path used to be. We pitch the tent in a sheltered cranny. Straight away, Loup crawls into his sleeping bag. I urge him to eat.
‘Please chéri, a little bread and cheese, to keep you warm.’
‘But I am not cold,’ he replies, forcing down a few bites of his food and falling asleep whilst chewing.
I on the other hand am wide-awake, cold and hungry. A few sips of whisky bring comfort. I eat half-heartedly, shiver and listen. Listen all night long to make sure Loup is breathing right.
Listen to the howling, which could be the howl of wolves in the Mercantour, or the cry of a lost baby. Listen to the sudden draft of air across my cheek, which could be the updraft of an angel’s wing. Is that you Pascal? I’m too cold to sleep, until I feel at last the glow of the sun penetrate the tent and caress my sleeping bag. I know it is safe to sleep now, because I hear the zip opening, and feel Loup clambering across me to get out.
But when I awake two hours later, I cannot find him. I check to see his pack is still there. Good. But then panic: could he just wander off, in some kind of daze? Drop over the edge? I myself feel in some kind of daze, uncertain on my feet as I hurriedly pee. Then I see him, sitting way out on the edge of a rock in the sun. He looks peaceful, as he takes it all in. Perhaps having a yarn with you Pascal. I leave him be, in the magnificence.
In this beatific morning.
Madness
“She could never make her husband jealous in life, but maybe flirting a little with the boy would do the trick, now that he was dead.”
Michael Pye, The Drowning Room.
During our absence, the hut has not miraculously transformed itself … there is nothing soft about being back there, apart from the birds which still sing all night long and the violet Alpilles, which hover tantalizingly too far in the distance to help. The canal is a loyal friend in this cursed heat. But despite our bathing misdemeanours, madness lurks.
Homesickness hankers and uncertainty corrodes; every rational attempt to put things into perspective abducted by the stranger I’ve become. Squawking like a loony, picking up the last of our kitchen knives, I slice it through the thick air towards my throat. I know I am out of order, but Loup was not helping, not getting it. Ignoring me. His work me
ans more. When all I want is some validation, some skin touch, hugs and smiles and appreciation from someone else apart from him.
‘And why don’t you have any fucking friends?’ I yell. And then quietly, ‘you know it might have made it a lot easier for me and us if you had introduced me to just one goddamned person, just one or two friends these past six years!’
‘Freya, you know I don’t have any friends, you’ve always known that’
‘That’s not true. You’ve had friends in the past, when I met you, good friends in fact!’
‘Well, you also know that it has always ended badly. You know I don’t trust anyone anymore.’
Loup was right. All of the friendships he had described to me had ended badly. One in murder. The rest, in years of bitter acrimony. I am careful not to pursue the first line of inquiry, although his whole family knows well the murder story. At times this has come between Loup and me, his unwitting witness. The stain of rage which was not his, but which nevertheless chased him into the forest to hide. Hide from friendship and loyalty and the child he was trying to protect. But I cannot ask questions. I have to let this story go, just as Loup has had to.
Our paucity of friendship and absence of sociability is disastrous for us both. It could not be always the fault of others that my husband has no friends. Or could it? And although I do not hanker for the mandatory face pecking and cheek kissing of Loup and his work colleagues, young and older, beautiful and faded, mostly women (he avoids the men), I still flinch at the glaring absence of any lips coming my way. I tell myself that the three-kiss ritual is superficial, and anyway I’d prefer to plant a real hug and embrace a real friend.
But I know I am jealous over this. I know part of my madness is missing skin touch with my close circle. And yeah, I wouldn’t knock back a big bear hug from an Aussie hunk, just to catch up with all Loup’s female face kissing. Moreover, I would have hopped on a plane ten times just to feel the wet unguarded mouths of my new baby grandsons, and offer them in return all of my unguarded tenderness. And I worry and know that six months is too long to be away from a baby who had given me all of his trust, and then I just upped and left. And I dread that he may never again give me all his tender trust. And that is a premonition that finally unhinges me.
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